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Inside the 'dark kitchens' shaking up London food delivery

Staying in is as good as eating out at London's hottest restaurant with Deliveroo Editions.

Katie Collins
Katie a UK-based news reporter and features writer. Officially, she is CNET's European correspondent, covering tech policy and Big Tech in the EU and UK. Unofficially, she serves as CNET's Taylor Swift correspondent. You can also find her writing about tech for good, ethics and human rights, the climate crisis, robots, travel and digital culture. She was once described a "living synth" by London's Evening Standard for having a microchip injected into her hand.
Katie Collins
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1 of 17 Andrew Hoyle/CNET

Deliveroo Editions

Takeout delivery company Deliveroo has set up "dark kitchens" around London called Editions. Established restaurants take over pods, kit them out and prepare food that's picked up by drivers and shipped out to surrounding residential areas.

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Pods for cooking in

It allows the restaurants to serve an entirely separate customer base from those who come to eat at their sit-down outlets.

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Foodie artwork

Deliveroo provides restaurants with containers rent free in sites around London.

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A Camberwell scene

We visited the Deliveroo Editions site in Camberwell in the south of the capital.

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Crust Bros pizza oven

Joe Moore started Crust Bros as a street food stall after learning how to make pizza in the kitchens of Rome and Naples.

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Mozzarella

Crust Bros expanded to serve the London takeout market with the help of Deliveroo Editions. 

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Prep station

Off the strength of its success, Moore has also now opened a bricks-and-mortar restaurant in the center of London.

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Deliveroo app

Orders come in via the Deliveroo app every evening.

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#PizzaKing

And these guys prep the pizzas before Deliveroo drivers come to pick them up.

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No, it's not a diner

Each Editions site hosts several restauants.

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An array of pods

There are five different restaurants on Camberwell's Editions site.

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Tandoor

And each restaurant brings its own menu and equipment into the mix -- whether that be pizza ovens or tandoors.

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Motu kitchen

Motu is a delivery-only brand set up by the same people who run hugely successful and popular London restaurants Gymkhana and Hoppers.

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Motu box

Motu puts its food in specially created boxes in order give customers a sense of the brand when their food arrives.

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Moped with delivery box

It's then up to Deliveroo drivers to deliver it.

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Deliveroo rider

Like Uber drivers, Deliveroo's riders are gig economy workers who can work as much or little as they like.

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Rider at rest

Some riders also work for rival delivery service UberEats.

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