TASTE
Nash & Proper ’ s The Sammich is a hot chicken ( or cauliflower ) sandwich made with a brioche bun , pickles , fuego sauce and a layer of coleslaw .
“ The saturation of hot chicken is not exclusive to California . … I personally get requests to franchise my concept weekly from people in state , out of state and out of country .”
Victor Ghaben , co-owner , World Famous Hotboys
So why was 2020 the breakout year for hot chicken in Sacramento ? The answer has to do with a confluence of foodbusiness trends , including ghost kitchens , third-party delivery services and restaurateurs ’ tendency to imitate what they see as successful . Like hot chicken , all of these trends existed before the coronavirus , but they were catalyzed by the economic and lifestyle shifts that defined the year .
A virtual testing ground
Ghost kitchens are commercial kitchens — sometimes inside an existing restaurant or commissary , sometimes purpose-built — that crank out meals for delivery , usually through third-party services such as DoorDash , Grubhub or
Postmates . The model can be a sandbox for chefs who want to test new concepts without investing in brick-and-mortar . A chef with access to a commercial kitchen can think of a new idea for a restaurant , set it up on the delivery platforms and fulfill orders for the ghost restaurant out of the existing kitchen . Customers might never know the new spot they ordered from doesn ’ t technically exist . Ghost kitchens were picking up steam before the pandemic — the Los Angeles-based startup CloudKitchens received $ 400 million from Saudi Arabia ’ s sovereign wealth fund to build rentable kitchen spaces around the U . S . in January 2019 , and DoorDash opened one with space for five restaurants in
Redwood City in October of that year . But the shift to the stay-at-home , order-in life has given the model a boost .
Of the four Nashville hot chicken businesses that opened in Sacramento in 2020 , two are ghost kitchen concepts based inside other businesses : SacVille Hot Chicken at Goldfield Trading Post and Plucked Chicken & Beer at Sauced BBQ & Spirits . There ’ s also Calibird at Tiger Bar and Food Hall , with a menu composed of fried chicken sandwiches that doesn ’ t mention Nashville but follows the familiar bun-slaw-spicy-sauce template .
All three of these host businesses previously depended on traffic from large gatherings . Tiger and Sauced both attracted sports fans from the nearby Golden 1 Center , and Goldfield Trading Post was best known as a venue for live country music . The hot chicken ghost kitchens let them offer something customers could enjoy at home , without the backdrop of basketball or banjo .
Revenue from SacVille Hot Chicken and another ghost restaurant based in the space , Netillo ’ s Takos , kept Goldfield Trading Post afloat during the long months without music , says Carlos Vicenty , who manages Goldfield ’ s kitchen with his wife , Alma Vicenty . ( The couple also owns two other Netillo ’ s Takos locations in Elk Grove and Cameron Park and the seafood restaurant Las Islitas in south Sacramento .) SacVille Hot Chicken opened for both online and in-person orders in February 2020 , but business picked up after the shelter-in-place order . “ When they closed everything down … the next thing you know , the phone , the ( point-of-sale ) tablets were going off the hook ” with orders , Vicenty says . “ It helped us for sure .”
Even Cecil L . Rhodes II , owner of Nash & Proper — one of the only non-virtual hot chicken restaurants in Sacramento — is in on the ghost kitchen trend . In 2020 , he opened a commissary in Northgate that acts as a ghost kitchen : It fulfills all Nash & Proper DoorDash orders , while the downtown brick-andmortar , which opened in September 2020 , and two food trucks only take
32 comstocksmag . com | February 2021