Rick Boyd knows the outside of the Pik Nik Foods convenience store and smoke shop on South Presa Street isn’t the most inviting exterior for the tiny kitchen where he makes burritos in a town that loves its tacos.
An old pay phone, its handset long gone, remains bolted to the concrete out front next to an empty magazine rack, both covered in graffiti. A hulking pair of out-of-commission gas pumps sit just feet from the building, near where Boyd would like to carve out a walk-up window.
Inside, the new-ish smoke shop counter, with paraphernalia on display below racks of cigarettes and vape products, runs along the north wall of the convenience store. Then there is the kitchen, a rectangle of maybe 100 square feet, where Boyd is running Burro Burro as well as testing out various fast-casual cuisines that lend themselves to delivery app-driven take-out.
Boyd is attempting, in an area not much bigger than a standard parking space, what’s known as a ghost kitchen — a kitchen without physical dining space that prepares food ordered online for delivery directly to customers.
Ghost, or “cloud” kitchens proliferated during the pandemic as restaurants shuttered, and they continue to grow in popularity along with consumers’ demand for online ordering and delivery. According to Market Research Future, ghost kitchens were a $58 billion industry in 2022, and it’s expected to grow to $115 billion by 2030.
Without the overhead of a dining room and waitstaff, ghost kitchens can give restaurateurs like Boyd the freedom to test various cuisines and menus.
“This was an experiment I wanted to do,” he said, after decades of running brick-and-mortar restaurants and serving as a franchise consultant.
In 2020, he and his wife, Tatiana Martz, were running two restaurants in Incline Village, on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. They converted one into a market and the other into take-out only in the face of pandemic lockdowns, but then wildfires forced them to evacuate. The couple ultimately sold their restaurants and returned to Texas.
Boyd brought with him a folder full of restaurant concepts he’d been mulling. With a lot of time on his hands in those early months of the pandemic, he wrote business plans for every single one. He sketched out what could go into an empty Subway sandwich shop or a former Starbucks.
The result is Phantom Concepts, a startup offering kitchens, convenience stores and food trucks the opportunity to “add streams of revenue” with already-developed brand identities like Backwoods Burger Co., Cluck’d Up Gourmet Wings and Tommie’s Caribbean.
Thus far, that effort is little more than a website. Boyd said he wants to test out the concepts first, “so we have data to share with prospective customers.” That will mean eventually leasing more kitchen space, he acknowledged.
On the first Sunday of each month, he offers popups of those concepts. On July 2 it was spicy fried chicken sandwiches; in June it was Philly cheesesteaks; August will be Tommie’s Caribbean. “It’s kind of a test — how many concepts can I fit into 100 square feet?” He thinks the answer is seven.
The couple first considered opening a barbecue joint in College Station, but their $15,000 smoker was stolen from their driveway. They’re glad they stayed in San Antonio — they love the “vitality and diversity” in the city, Southtown in particular. “There’s just so much more going on here, and so much more that’s going to be going on here,” he said.
Burro Burro’s May launch was a little rocky. Plumbing and electrical issues in the kitchen early on led to closures and irregular hours. Boyd isn’t yet on top of his social media game, save Facebook, which mainly brings in neighborhood traffic. Then there’s the taco problem.
San Antonio isn’t really a burrito town, Boyd has learned. And for years, the Pik Nik kitchen served up dollar tacos, as he was reminded by a cheeky reply on Facebook responding to one of his posts about burritos: “The people want old school pik nik tacos.”
Boyd said some walk-in customers still try to order them. He doesn’t want to add tacos out of respect for the venerable Taco Haven restaurant a block away. He has added breakfast burritos, however.
A weeklong popup of smash burgers was popular, he said, but the vent hood pulled in too much sweltering summer air. “We’ll bring that back in the fall,” he said. He also hopes to extend his hours eventually to pick up late-night customers.
For now, most of his business, even through delivery apps, is within a five-block radius of the kitchen.
Chris Crawford, who has lived in neighboring King William for 30 years and moderates the We Are Southtown Facebook page, welcomes Boyd’s efforts. “The neighborhood needs this type of quick and ready take-out,” he said.
