It's orders of magnitude less. Where I live, in a very cheap part of the country, I could buy a failed restaurant with enough of the pieces in place to not have to build out (permitting is a nightmare in the food world) for let's say $50k. That'd be a bad place in a bad area with most of the appliances gone. But I'd still have a hood and sprinklers and plumbing, so I'd be able to sink another $50k in and have a kitchen running before too long. If I wanted a bad failed restaurant somewhere that might actually bring foot traffic, double that cost.

Or I can rent a commissary kitchen for $18/hr, plus $100-$200/mo or so in dry and refrigerated storage, and scale from there. I could get started in a week.

To most chefs, this is the difference between "I can afford this now" and "I will literally never in my entire life be able to afford this."