Normal in Australia, and that's often just for the burger, no sides. Plus it usually takes two hours to get cold food. I stopped ordering quite some time ago.
I’m a DoorDash driver and I spent ten minutes looking for a Chinese food place to pick up my customer’s order only to find out their “authentic Chinese food” was inside a TGI Friday’s.
Not a delivery person, but I used Doordash to lookup resturants and yeah! It was weird seeing places I had never heard of, only to see "oh wait thats in TGI Fridays, iHop, Frendly's. - Pretty much any chain restaurant that makes a variety of things.
I’m looking at Mr beast burger on door dash now and it’s not marked. I also looked at some places that are run out of those big 40 restaurant mega kitchens and those are not marked either. Am I looking in the wrong place? I’m in San Jose, California for context
by haveing this many "resturants" the consumer can be tricked into thinking that a price for a type of food is "normal" and by haveing more listings for esentialyy the same thing they can artificaily inflate the price, or basically manipulateing the market and the consumer with a vital resource that everyone requires to stay alive. this is price fixing and monopolization.
I'm having a dumb moment and I don't know what you mean by labeling in this context. I don't use any food apps so that might also be why I'm confused. Update: oh they meant labeling what was a virtual restaurant.
In Canada this is illegal but they still do it. Under consumer protection law, deceptive advertising/ deception of the consumer before making a purchase is illegal in every sense.
@@seekingthelovethatgodmeans7648 Yes, consumer protection laws are a bridge too far, allowing companies to run roughshod over their customers with zero consequences is what has given American companies their stellar reputation worldwide. That was a joke, in case you were wondering. I wouldn't buy anything made in America if it has moving parts or has to bear any kind of load.
@@stevierose8749 yes and no, in Canada we have someone you can report stuff like this to “the consumer general”. But if anything will actually happen after you report is a different story
@@theParticleGod considering the country's incredible 75% obesity rate, surely US chairs and step ladders and such must be able to support a fairly hefty load.
DUDE The WSJ just ran an article about Uber Eats reforming its ghost kitchen brand policies and the reporter mentioned this video! 🎉 You're doing investigative journalism dude!
From The Verge, which links to the WSJ article and Uber Eats new How To Start a Virtual Restaurant page, which has their new policies and guidelines near the bottom of the page. " Uber Eats now requires locations to have menu items that “are at least 60% different” from any other virtual restaurants “operating from that same physical location.” The same goes for the brand’s “parent restaurant,” or the kitchen that houses the virtual brands. Additionally, Uber will now require the ghost kitchen and its parent restaurant to maintain a 4.3-star rating or higher on the app, have 5 percent or fewer orders that they have canceled, and have a 5 percent or lower inaccurate orders rate. Uber notes that it “reserves the right to remove VRs from the Uber Platforms that are not in compliance.” "
I am so overjoyed and beyond surprised to see that something is actually being done about a major problem in this country for once in every other blue moon
I can't describe my heart break when I realized that ordering from pasqually's pizza (a restaurant I assumed to be a locally owned shop) was just Chuck 'e Cheese wearing a fake mustache to trick us into thinking we aren't ordering from huge corporations
$17 for a generic burger from a place that basically pays no bills, almost zero employees to pay for, zero everything. The amount of profit these generate is insane.
Im a Grubhub driver and i have to deliver to these "virtual restaurants" all the time and it's a little frustrating to keep track of lmao like i'll get an order from "The Meltdown" and follow my GPS all the way there to find out it's just Dennys
Yeah I get you I started using door dash two years ago when I moved out and I'd see like "Mr Beast Burger" and I thought "fucking where is this!?" Then I'd look it up and it's just in a Chili's I was like "!?!?" Edit: ok posted this before watching the video I did not know Chili's was gonna be a running gag but I'm glad it is
@@SevenHunnid you actually have a pretty good idea for youtube videos i feel like spamming on youtube comments isn’t the best place to find viewers on videos like these maybe scout out channels if your gonna do it that have something major in common but i feel like your videos could blow up if it got the right recognition
I guess this is how misinformation gets spread so easily. This lie, which so many people could simply pull out their phone and check, gets upvoted.... why. I wonder if this is some shady tactic to convince people that ghost kitchens are labeled so if they don't see a label (which doesn't exist, checked both the app and the website) then it's a local place. Makes sense with the topic of them kinda being deceptive in the video... anyways, doordash doesn't have any indication that a ghost kitchen (it's just wings) is a ghost kitchen, unless you choose pickup which tells you you'll have to go to chili's. Edit: so after a bit more digging, it appears there are two "categories" of ghost kitchens, one's like Mr Beast Burgers, which are not affiliated with any particular brand, and MBB is labeled in the app. However, the other category, which is ghost kitchens that are rebranded well-known chains (such as it's just wings, the meltdown, maggiano's etc) are not labeled. So while not and outright lie (i apologize, retracting that bit) it's still quite misleading, and still don't trust that no label means not ghost kitchen.
@@LSSTmusic it might take a while to roll out. some apps will only release an update for a small group of people to test it out before releasing it officially. If they do, I hope they also give the option to filter them out bc I am sick of seeing thrilled cheese at the top of my list
I’ve watched this video 100 times trying to find out how to do my senior econometric thesis on ghost kitchens. I have degrees in political science, economics and logistics and my family owns a small restaurant and this is the biggest ethical conundrum i have ever encountered in every single facet. Ghost kitchens are economies of scale but violate the theory of the informative prerequisite of voluntary exchange. There is no way to effectively tax these businesses in places that have employee based rates. You can’t impose legislation on a place that doesn’t exist. My family’s deli relies on a difference in experience and hospitality to provide living wages for workers and find locally sourced meat and produce as possible but when that difference is removed from the equation, we’re fucked. I think about this every day.
Here in Norway every restaurant has to hang up the report from their last health inspection and keep it visible at all times. It also display the rating they got from the 3 previous inspections and their dates. Now that food delivery and ghost kitchens have taken off I guess it would only make sense that they put these 'reports' digitally inside the apps for each restaurant.
Los Angeles has a similar law AFAIK every actual restaurant displays its health code rating. Naturally as with all "market disruptor" style tech businesses market disruption means "not obeying laws and avoiding regulation" so it really doesn't matter what they report in public or on the apps, after all its already been demonstrated these businesses are going out of their way to deceive customers and rebrand at will any time they think their reputation is damaged.
No offense intended with this...but you coulda stopped at "here in Norway." You didn't have to rub in our faces all that shit about real transparency and anti-corruption price fixing, freedom, accountability, proof of work. Christ! Didn't you ever consider some American moron with an IQ of 41 working 3 jobs making $8 an hour to support 17 Mennonite children he had with his sister might eventually read this? That shit hurts me deeply man! Our whole political system is broken from the top down, and there's a geriatric shitbag at the helm. You get 3 fukkin health reports!?
@@PropaneWP I'm sorry did you expect someone to pass or enforce a law that prevents people with lots of money from continuing to make more money? You might be waiting for a while...
To be honest I think just the fact that they take up so many slots on delivery apps is the most sinister thing. Their restaurants are selling the same item with 9 different names; they don't need that many separate restaurants even from a branding perspective. But if you own 90% of the options on that appear on a delivery app, then there's a lot less chance of someone clicking on something that doesn't belong to you.
this! also it serves to put pressure on real local restaurants to pay the delivery apps more money to get priority placement on the app or risk being drowned by the dozens of ghost restaurants.
There's a really terrible pizza place near my home that takes up like 8 slots, all selling the same menu of pizzas under different names. I'm not a pizza snob; when I say the pizza is bad, I mean like, these are some seriously cheap-ingredients being used. I like delivery apps that let me "sort by distance" partly because I can more easily pick out which scuzzballs are doing the "slot squatting" thing.
I refuse to buy from Ghost Kitchens. I don't order from delivery apps anymore because they're so rampant and because delivery app fees are ridiculous but when I DID order from them I would research any restaurant I didn't recognize. When it hit the point it was clear almost everything was fake I knew it wasn't worth it anymore.
I used to deliver food for both door dash and Uber eats, and picking up at one of those so called “Gohst Kitchens’’ has been a literal nightmare! No pun intended! Not only are they deceiving people to believe they are ordering food from an actual restaurant, but the DISRESPECT they have towards delivery workers is ridiculous! Waiting time could be anywhere from 20 minutes to over an hour and half, past the time they tell you to get there (probably due to the insane amount of different types of orders they need to prepare) and often even canceling the order altogether and tell you to walk away without NOTHING after standing there for an hour+
@@user-xe2hf6fi8dyou’d be surprised- but at the same time later realize that not everyone even has even touched youtube, let alone know a specific youtube that does variety comedy. It’d be like if I was in the same room as Micheal from Vsauce- I might just think he looks like him if anything unless I watch every one of his videos. They aren’t like celebrities talked about in the media, they have a fanbase that avid watchers could easily discern him, but anything less they just pass of as another person.
hi i'm an actual professional graphic designer with a university degree and i am proud of your logo, good job! :) it has a kind of charm that i can't fully explain. self expression is always a beautiful thing no matter the "skill level"
I noticed this too! Not all of them have it but far more do. I live in an area where it's easier to spot because it's smaller but hopefully it becomes mandatory
Just so you know， China been doing it for years， this concept is noway new. So is food delivery app and scan payment. you be surprised just how many NEW CONCEPT are tested by the Chinese market and the US adapted to its.
Honestly, if they said they were a ghost kitchen and where they ran out of I'd respect it more and if it was ran out of a small local businesses kitchen I wouldn't mind supporting it. This is why I always look up the address and yelp and google reviews of any place I've never eaten at. I'm a cheapskate and I hate wasting money on something that looks good and its shit and then I look up reviews and everyone says its bad and it has 2.5 stars on everything. If I see a weird food place i've never heard of and its address is a standalone chilis, yeah I'll pass. I'd rather just eat chili's and not deceptive marketing.
Strategy of flooding the market is being used pretty much everywhere from politics, to tiktok ads, to delivery apps. The confusion is intentional. Platforms tend not to care about the duplication as it makes it look like they're providing more choice, meanwhile honest businesses struggle to get noticed. We need better validation systems but it's unlikely platforms will implement that without an incentive
Its gotten to the point where if Im on a delivery service and I see a restaurant in my area I dont recognize but maybe sounds good, I run the address thru google. And 95% of them are ghost kitchens. I wont buy from them.
One issue with ghost kitchens is reputation. Food delivery apps allow you to rate and review restaurants and dishes, so customers can make a more informed decision, and the establishment is held to a high standard. But if it's a virtual one, especially one that doesn't bother with branded packaging, there is zero accountability. If it gets a bad rap that lowers its average star rating, or is slapped with some unfavourable reviews, the ghost kitchen can just shut down that particular virtual brand and create a new one overnight with the same menu. At most it needs to get new sticker printed so it can slap a different logo on the generic cardboard takeout boxes. All negative ratings wiped out, and no one's the wiser.
Miss you man I hope eventually when your feeling better and in the right mindset you come back into making content, if not I totally understand and wish you the best !!! ❤️
I worked as a hostess at Chilis, and I had many Uber Eats drivers come in and ask for a place called "It's just wings." I would be so confused, and so would the driver. I had one person say they were driving around for about 15 minutes looking for a wings place, only to be greeted by a location for a chili's. And for anyone wondering why Mangianos Italian food is coming out of a Chili's kitchen, it's because Binker, the company that owns Chili's, also owns Mangianos. I also worked in To-go in the chilis sometimes, so I had to pack the wings. The wings for Its Just Wings are exactly the same for the Nascar Fuel wings.
I REALLY enjoyed this video. Nice job. I did not know about the concept of ghost kitchens, but felt like I was going crazy seeing "restaurants" in my area on DoorDash that I've never seen before. I didn't trust it, so I never ordered from them. But I did look up the address to a MrBeast once, and saw that it was being run out of the local university's kitchen. Absolutely ridiculous. We can't trust a thing anymore!
as a former door dasher, i can also tell you this put a major strain on deliverers. trying to find just wingin it when all i can see is the frickin chilis in front of me is so confusing. it takes time off of my dash, reducing the time i have to deliver other orders and potentially risks my tip. they dont tell you “hey this is inside the bww”. they say “hey heres this burger restaurant. find it!”
@@amberpalettes8382 I google the address before I head out and if its already labeled as a different restaurant I instantly know this business has a "ghost kitchen" in it
THIS. It’s so confusing, especially since I usually dash after dark (dash after dark sounds like a band name). One time, an order took me to a really sketchy-looking building in the middle of nowhere (that I can now only assume is a ghost kitchen) at night and I ended up just cancelling the order 😅
mybe door dash needs to add some notes to restaurant locations to share with others ect. its not like they have a platform that can benefit from this??? silly door dash
I worked in a ghost kitchen for like six months and it was honestly the best job I've ever had. They closed after six months because no one was buying their food, but while it lasted I was getting paid to stand around in a kitchen and not make food for like four hours a day.
What’s also crazy about ghost kitchens is when they’re put in existing restaurants, the staff doesn’t get raises even though they’re now having to make the food of multiple restaurants. For example, before I quit Jason’s Deli they introduced two ghost kitchens- a Mac and cheese restaurant and a baked potato restaurant. We had to learn 10+ new recipes and package their orders on TOP of our existing menu yet our managers never gave us raises even though we were doing more work AND generating more revenue for the company
I totally understand this 😅 I work for a breakfast-based restaurant and we have like only 5 other ghost kitchens. It’s super stressful for new cooks to be learning 6 new menus while dealing with understaffing. I’ve seen things just thrown together last minute bc of the immense stress within the restaurant plus all the other online restaurant orders on top it. It’s totally overworking the cooks who don’t get paid for it while also ripping people off bc that shit just isn’t cheap here.
@@Squat5000 My husband works as a cook with me and they WILL NOT give him a raise. He’s also currently unable to leave due to a visa issue he’s having 😭 We both want him to leave and I only make the $2.13/hour + tips as a waitress but it doesn’t affect me as much as the cooks. I totally agree with you but we’re just kinda stagnant atm.
@@Squat5000 This is currently happening 😂 Everyone is leaving and our corporate raised the menu prices by like $2-$3. I’m actually in the process of leaving myself though! Happy to find something more meaningful as a job ☺️
Lol at the people saying "the salary should be the same even though there is more demand and 5x the recipes", replying to every complaint about wages here on behalf of the businesses, does the corporate boot taste good?
I kept finding ghost kitchens claiming to be completely gluten free. I have celiac disease and finding out my food was being made in a non-gluten free environment explained why I kept getting sick 🙃
@@gabrielhowardMKE you know, the cabal where around 2 million Americans (per the NIH) have this thing with their bodies that limits what kind of food they can safely eat…oh wait, that’s not a cabal, it’s an actual medical diagnosis 🙄
I know it's been a year, but "but we only serve people through delivery apps" it so fucking scummy. These are kids who haven't trained themselves to be skeptical yet.
I'm a line cook and the stories I've heard from my coworkers who've worked at places that operated as ghost kitchens are astonishing. Being a cook for the one restaurant you already work at is stressful enough. Turn that family-style Italian chain restaurant with its own outrageously long menu into a gourmet burger joint/wing stop/seafood restaurant/pizza place & you really can't be surprised when your veteran cooks start having panic attacks mid-rush. And of course the kitchen staff at these places don't make any additional money for doing 5x the work.
Yeah they expect the consumer to pay them with tips I fucking hate that system. And it works too because people feel bad for workers now they are tipping more which they can hardly afford as is.
@@jacksondbrophy9 sometimes, it does depend on the place you are ordering from but it’s genuinely a despicable payment system that everyone in America has bought into. I tip workers but I firmly believe it shouldn’t be necessary or a vital aspect of pay. We have a lot of workers rights to fight for especially with ai coming.
I'm a doordash driver and after receiving a few orders for these ghost restaurants, I realized that there's a single building, away from everything else, where basically five (or more, probably) "restaurants" run out of. One's a wing place, the other is mexican food, etc. No lockers, but I only ever saw one person at the counter and the building was like...deadly quiet. Couldn't even hear food being cooked or other employees. Weirdest experience. Also, as someone who has served and cooked in a restaurant for years, my greatest question still hasn't been answered. How tf do these kitchens work?? How do they keep that much inventory? How do they get trained for 40+ menus????? Even if half of those menus are duplicate items, like the beer battered cod burger, the sheer range of food is intimidating. I would do anything to be a fly on the wall and see how these places really operate.
Tbh most of it is probably just frozen reheated 🗑. So not a ton of skill or knowledge needed and it'd make sense since the restaurants are operated based on making money rather than actually serving good food.
i feel like the food from a place like that wouldn't really be good, usually resteraunts that have like 5 different cuisines usually aren't great usually. it has to be as other commenters have said re-heated food or a bunch of pre-made food possibly? If it's not frozen food maybe they make the food at the start of the day and then once places start opening up they just re-heat that food and send it out?
This sounds like a hotbed for employee abuse too, if they're so unmonitored I bet the people working these kitchens are overworked for very little pay.
as someone who worked in a normal restaurant who got 4 ghost kitchens added to it, these kitchens dont work. Multiple places near me including the place i worked at closed because kitchens kill you. Itll be a busy rush and suddenly the chicken place and the sandwich place get 20+ orders combined and your restaurant is on a two hour wait. People stopped showing up to eat and we literally had to close down. The way it would work is we would be serving food as usual and suddenly our tablet would start ringing. One cook would have to stop what they are doing and go to the other grill with a separate cooler and freezer and make the food, because it was given priority. We also couldnt turn it off, so if your cooks are 45 minutes behind, oh well. This resulted in a lot of angry customers leaving. And we dont even get most of the money for the food. Youre trained as if its normal food, you just put it in to go boxes. That really about it tho lol
WoW, mind blown. I just discovered Ghost Kitchens in my small city in Southern Ontario Canada. I even found a ghost kitchen operating at McDonald's HQ in Mississauga which is about 92 Kms away from me. I wondered why I couldn't pick up an order from a Korean restaurant in town. I'm going to be looking into this further because I loved the Korean food I was forced to buy using Uber Eats; no other restaurant was serving the Korean meal I wanted but that one. Suddenly I can order Tteobokki from every Korean restaurant in my town. You just got a new sub.
One thing I wished you would have mentioned was how understaffed the ghost kitchens are in general. I had to watch a group of 5 operate over a hundred orders from nearly 15 "different" restaurants in one day, and they are NOT being compensated fairly
My thoughts exactly. After working in the restaurant business cooking for over a decade, this sounds like a nightmare for the cooks. Beyond how many orders they single handedly have to put out, I can't imagine doing the prep for 44 different places. And to top it all off, not even get to see the customers enjoying the food, just sending it out to the thankless void. If a consultant works for multiple businesses at the same time, they get paid for all of them. That is how these cooks should be paid. Working 44 kitchens at once. Get pooped on ghost kitchen owners, you greedy fuddruckers.
I truly cannot imagine going to work at Chili's and actually preparing orders not only for my own establishment but also 10 other ghost kitchens online. But then at the end of the night, I still only get a check for one shift because I only technically work at Chili's. Absolutely fucked up. Yet another way to pull a little more money out of the middle and lower class while CEOs keep getting rich
Pssh, I am not surprised at all. Good ol American Capitalism at its finest, exploit the shit out of low-paid workers to maximize profits, this time for the profits of multiple "companies." Imagine that. Like, imagine that you work at a bank, you're a clerk. But, the bank you work at supports 10 different "ghost" banks, and you have to know their banking systems and handle all their customers but you only get paid by ONE parent company bank.
@@multi2736 Well, it is a _virtual_ restaurant. The whole point of it is to give the veneer of a real restaurant, but in actuality being a cheap profit machine.
my college had a beast burger running out of our student union and i remember everyone thinking it was so strange. i think it’s also significant that all of our campus restaurants are run through grubhub. not sure if they were just feeding students or do other orders but it was the regular dinning workers running the place.
As a former health inspector, please avoid eating at ghost kitchens unless you can confirm they are located at an address that is regularly inspected/permitted under a different name (i.e. chilis has a brand that’s a ghost kitchen). A lot of ghost kitchens are operating illegally and sometimes they’re literally people cooking out of their house. We couldn’t catch them because they would change addresses frequently. There’s no way to know if they are safely handling food.
The way that these companies create dozens of fake restaurants that all take up a spot on uber eats reminds me of how half of those baby nursery rhyme channels are all owned by one company that creates dozens of multi channel networks each with a hundred channels in order to flood the youtube algorithm. They both give me the feeling of a swarm of cockroaches.
It's the same thing with food in the grocery store, too. Most of the different food brands you see in the grocery store are owned by just a few massive parent companies.
Been going on for years and years and it’s just a rip off of how companies will sell the exact same thing under multiple brands or even supposedly different versions of the same brand, even though there’s no difference. Like how they’ll sell the same painkiller but in a bottle that says “For migraines”, or the same toothpaste in 5 different package designs claiming to be for whitening, gum care, tartar control, etc.
It's also worth noting that these restaurants have no accountability for getting your order right since it's a completely virtual restaurant. You can't go up to the counter and ask them to fix your order since you ordered online, and they never have regular orders to keep them in line. Leaving a review is pointless, because worst case they just make a new fake restaurant with no bad reviews
this is exactly what I was thinking- no one can hold them accountable for anything. I'm more concerned about what goes in the food that I have no way to know about. American fast food usually has tons of added sugars and what have you, but at least if I look up a chain I can find out how they're cramming millions of calories into a dinky little communion wafer of a burger- there's no finding out what these places are adding, they're not real restaurants, they don't exist, I have no recourse.
a less horrible and sketchy ghost kitchen story: my mom and dad run a local restaurant in DC serving southern american comfort food. we’re a muslim asian immigrant family and she’s always wanted to make some more culturally reflective food items but been nervous about alienating our customer base. She set up a ghost kitchen from her own restaurant to start selling halal options for muslim locals and the few that actually eat there have loved it! It takes time to officially integrate something like this for a small business owner… so it’s a cool feature. but yeah everything u said is valid, i just wanted to share one cool use.
Yeah I deliver for the apps. I knew about ghost kitchens in existing restaurants but I never thought anything untoward was happening in these places with multiple restaurants because I know a family who uses one a couple days a week when they’re not using their food truck. There seems to be a difference between the city kitchen type places where multiple small restaurants can have a base of operations and the example in the beginning of this vid.
24:00 I helped a past partner when she was trying to run a food truck. The regulations were insane. The people that blow tacos out of trailers know how to get around the laws... I can't describe how upsetting it is, because her clean, beautiful, legitimate truck was too expensive and difficult to maintain. Yeah, I know the laws. Also, I happen to love tacos.
You bring up a great point about ghost kitchens regarding cross contamination. I ordered from a place that didn't have any seafood at all on the menu and ended up nearly having to go to the hospital because of an allergen. I looked it up - even tried calling the place - and it was a ghost kitchen that had like 23 "restaurants" in a single strip mall. Shame on me, I guess, but when I go out to a restaurant that doesn't even approach seafood I don't have to worry about my specific allergy and the menu is usually a VERY good indicator. Ghost kitchens are friggin land mines.
this is random but I learned from one of my food service jobs that if you're allergic to shellfish you might also be allergic to bugs because they have similar skeletons or something like that. Point is, just avoid anything with crickets or bugs! (I worked at an ice cream shop that had crickets in their spooky halloween flavors for some reason) Just saying, always mention your seafood allergy because who in their right mind would think it would matter at an ice cream shop?
As someone with a nut allergy this is literally my nightmare- if I think I’m ordering from a Vietnamese restaurant, I’m not going to put a note for my allergy usually because there aren’t many nuts used in the cuisine. If it was housed in the same place as a Thai restaurant- which uses lots of nuts usually- without my knowledge, bad things could happen for sure
You should definitely be able to sue for that. At the very least you should get court fees + hospital fees and ideally youd get some sort of trauma reparations as well
Thank you, Eddy! As a Doordash driver and line cook, I have been ranting about the deceptive nature of ghost kitchens for the past two years and no one knows what I am even talking about. I'm glad to see an influencer shedding some light on this
I’ve heard about ghost kitchens before but I had no clue they went this deep, it’s sad to see especially when small businesses are losing profit because of them
My boyfriend and I wanted chicken wings. So we ordered chicken wings from a restaurant called chicken chicken. Ordered it and it arrived in the Pizza Pizza box (a pizza chain in Canada). Honestly we should’ve seen that one coming lol
there's a ghost kitchen near me and i didn't know about this concept for a long time so i kept trying to find it and i only just now realized its a ghost kitchen opperating out of a Denny's
The term "ghost kitchen" sounds so cool. Like, you go in, all the staff are ghosts and it moves the next the night so you have to follow the clues or be invited to find it
My mind always jumps to a completely empty or automated kitchen whenever I hear the phrase. these aren't ghosts you can see; there's cooks in the back but nobody's home...including the cooks.
Lol as a graphic designer, I know too well that feeling Eddy had of being proud of something you designed and then you ask for feedback and they're like "actually this is lame" 😀
@@gl00mbunny Not really. I'd say it's "bad" in that it looks in that it looks similar to a mockup design for a branding project I may have done in Uni, not in the "oh god, he's delusional for being proud of this, it's a sin against humanity" type of way. It's centered well enough so it's not uncomfortable to look at for too long, it helps elevate the product. etc. I think it's unfinished, but you really don't want to go into a meeting with a super polished final product only to be told it's shit and it needs to be redone from the ground up-depending on the stage of the review process you're in, of course. It's a waste of time and resources.
This is crazy, I work in a restaurant that was mentioned in this video, and we have been so confused about these ghost kitchens, as a matter of fact, we had NO IDEA of the concept of a ghost kitchen, we were just told something along the lines of "it's our restaurant but it's not", "it's listed under a different name but it's our stuff", we were never told about "ghost kitchens", this is a genuine shock to me, I was not expecting this to be relevant to me, just something to learn about, thanks for the video!
Makes sense. My mom was engaged in a pyramid scheme, which is typical among moms, the thing is, only her business is not a pyramid, it just ultilizes multi-level selling model, aggressively.
like 30 year ago, I worked in a Boston seafood restaurant. One day a small group shows up as we're leaving. I asked who they were. I was told they were a bakery and they rented out the kitchen. So same but a little different. They handled their own food.
Yeah but at the very least Chuck e Cheese has a bit of an excuse for it, their main business are eat in diners and during covid that obviously caused troubles so personally I don't really judge them too harshly for the Pasqually thing. The place was even named after a member of their animatronic band and apparently they did change the pizza recipe to be better so yeah. Pretty much the only one of these that I can forgive, times were hard, I understand the decision.
@@poppythedogofwonders Just gonna add that they did actually change the recipe, i dont know what exactly (They claim that they have a thicker crust and extra sauce) and how much but i do know that atleast slightly they did infact change something about it
Great detailed video!!! This same happened to us in 2021. I was super mad. It was covid times and folks were like doing this sketchy business. At one address there were 6 indian restaurants. I know that shop place, it was vacant lot, but it had a restaurant beside it. And they were running it from there. I just called up our regular place can I order on phone. They said yes and i never spent money on online order.
I could've sworn I saw that tag before as well, but just looked at mine at restaurants I know are virtual brands and couldn't see it anywhere, seems inconsistent
Is it going to stop you from eating there…no Humans just want to create drama from everything thing. It won’t matter tbh it’s just food and you need it. So you order no matter where it comes from.
I actually just started working at IHOP a couple weeks ago and had never heard of ghost kitchens before. What's even more wild about these kitchens is that even as an employee I can't order the ghost kitchen food in person, I would have to pay Doordash for the delivery fees. Like, I see the food right there. Give me some waffle fries.
I had the same thing. I worked for a restaurant and they had 3 virtual kitchens within it. I couldn't order anything on it, but we would package the food there. Super Dilla is a good example of one of IHOP's virtual kitchens
Man as a Uber driver you stole my video idea I’ve been thinking some people need to know chiquitos do like 5 different menus. Bao now kick as burritos. Franky and bennies do like 3 bone jam is one of them. It’s crazy man.
Mr Beast burger even started a ghost chain where i live. And im outside the US, in what i would call a smaller insignificant city. In Sweden. It was never announced. It just appeared one day and everyone was a bit confused. And when people tried going to this supposed restaurants adress, there was nothing there. People didnt even see a kitchen or nothing through the windows. But you could order it online. It did not last long. Not only was the quality worse than that of regular burger chains we already have. Swedes dont really like the ghost chain restaurants. It dont fly here. Beast Burgers lasted a whole 4-6 months if im not wrong.
I suppose the main problem is that these ghost restaurants don't have to worry about tarnishing their reputation as they didn't invest in establishing a reputation and could therefore just "close down the restaurant," then establish a new one, changing the name while keeping the same menu if they start to rack up lots of bad reviews or health violations.
That's actually an interesting point. What needs to happen then is they are licensed as real businesses and the owner pays for company registration and stuff. The delivery only fulfilment method is nothing new, and I can totally see more of these taking the place of dine in restaurants so the conversation needs to move on from whether or not they should exist to how do we prevent the greedy cash grab element and ensure high quality and standards as in real dine in restaurants. In Ireland at least they'd be susceptible to the same health code checks and stuff.
I think this is a consumer protection issue. People don't know where their food is really coming from. They're buying food under the impression that it's being prepared by a different company. The least they could do is state any other names the kitchen operates under in the app.
I’m no legal expert, I would just hope that this would fall under existing laws because consumers can’t exactly see what’s going on in the kitchen at any restaurant, whether eating there or take out. But it is for sure worse to order from what seems like a new place, only to find out it’s a ghost kitchen
Where do you think the rest of your food is coming from? If you're eating at a restaurant in America generally it's coming from 3 different companies that source and distribute it to restaurants
I don't see any issue at all. You ordered a cod sandwich, you got a cod sandwich. We don't have problem with some John Johnson selling burgers under McDonalds brand and not John Johnson brand.
@@jamesmiller2521but at least with mcdonald’s you’re being told that it’s the same establishment, they’re not pretending to be another restaurant and deceiving the customer. the main issue here is that these larger companies are deceiving customers by pretending to be dozens of restaurants at once, and actively boxing out real small businesses that don’t have the same (huge) stream of income as the big companies.
Thanks for this video, its really an eye opener for me. We should be very careful. Thanks a thousand times man for making this video to educate people.
I used to be a DoorDash driver, I’ve had a dennys employee tell me that they couldn’t give the customer a drink because they only had denny’s cups instead of the ghost’s restaurant’s ones. It honestly seems like they don’t want the customer to know where it comes from. Also, I had probably twice as many orders from “it’s just wings” than I actually did from chili’s, even though they’re the same restaurant.
That was so confusing the first time I got the order for a restaurant at the address of a restaurant, maybe chili's or similar. But they don't have any sign so I circled a few times before going in to see what's up and they said they only do this ghost company online. I guess to keep it secret from their normal customers. Really annoying as a delivery driver.
I work at Captain D's and that's exactly how it is. We run a ghost kitchen called Catfish Kitchen and it's just our catfish with the prices marked up and different packaging.
Ghost kitchens should be registered like regular businesses (needing licenses) so they can be properly monitored. It would make people think twice about running so many of them in one place, higher taxes, and more scrutiny. Also love the 'virtual restaurant' banner idea. The whole idea reminds me of celebrities buying a line of alcohol and putting their name on it. There is no care here, it is an extension of merchandise.
Uh huh so should we also call out youtubers having merch from the same supplier? Most of them are china made or from alibaba. How about that jacksepticeye having a "coffee brand" where he just put his name on a preexisting coffee product?
@@itsgonnabeanaurfromme You can and should call that out, yes. Selling the same beanie, one saying "MrBeast" and the other saying "jacksepticeye" is a lazy cash grab (example). Worth pointing it out and not supporting it. Some youtuber I occasionally watch published a "cook book" that was essentially just recipes they cooked on the show. Issue is, they took the recipes for the show from a free recipe-sharing site, so the cookbook is essentially just some flavor text plopped next to "burger recipe" typed into google and picking the first result.
the biggest issue I have with ghost kitchens is they'll try to cater to people with certain food allergies, but they totally cross contaminate, this is very dangerous, and these businesses are very cavalier about the issue.
That... Wow. 44 resturaunts from one location?? The worst I've seen is lik... There's like 7 different resturaunt entries for one adress in my town. Actually I checked real quick and it looks like they moved out 3 or so of them to a new location, like... Pretty much next doors. From examplestreet 1 to examplestreet 6.
Ghost kitchens are basically the food version of aliexpress dropshipping where companies buy cheap generic products and slap their brand on it. Companies include raycon, ridgewallets, manscaped, movement watch
@@joaogomes9405my mom (bless her heart) got me raycons because she Fell for the Marketing. I wear Sennheiser CXBT 7.0 on a daily Basis and holy shit are the raycons bad. I'd rather Listen to TV static than any music through these. Also that was a very awkward conversation about tech gifts in the future.
There's a legitimate small restaurant near me called "Ghost Kitchen" that I avoided ordering from for a long time because I thought they were just being cheeky with the name. Then I drove by their site one day and saw they were an actual place that just chose a semi unfortunate name. Food ended up being amazing.
Maybe you should tell them? I'm sure if you thought that then probably lots of other people thought that as well. Maybe they could just change the name to "host kitchen" or "ghostly kitchen" or something
I’m a DoorDash driver and there’s like this warehouse like facility I’ve picked up food for that has several kitchens in it for restaurants that don’t really exist. They’re solely there for delivery services and you can’t sit down and eat there
I quit my last kitchen job because of ghost kitchens. We already had a 50+ item menu, with all you can eat wings on Wednesdays. We ran delivery through our own website, our phones, SkipTheDishes, Ubereats, door dash and our hometown delivery app. On top of all that, our corporate thought it would be wonderful to unload us with FOUR more menus in ghost kitchens. A Mac and cheese one, a chicken thigh one, a poutine one, and a desert one, all on top of our already huge menu. It’s making people quit kitchen jobs left right and center.
I mean, that's awful for you and I'm sorry it happened. But it should make people quit because these places shouldn't exist wth A job is a job, money is money but if you like cooking and you're passionate about it don't work in a ghost kitchen .~.
As a doordasher, I got SO CONFUSED the first time I got an order from one of these places. The address took me to Carrabba’s but the name was Tender Shack. I thought I was going crazy. Spent around 15 minutes driving around making sure I wasn’t missing anything, until I finally decided to go inside and ask. I had no idea something like this existed until then.
same, my boyfriend is a dasher and the ghost kitchens here all go through the IHOP i used to work at. we have "thrilled cheese", "super mega dilla", and "pardon my cheesesteak" which are all so off putting
@@alexandrarainbow520 Exactly! The couple times I’ve gotten ghost kitchens since then, it’ll either have no warning, or it’ll be like “Maggiano’s near Chili’s” like NO IT’S NOT NEAR CHILI’S IT’S IN CHILI’S STOP HURTING MY TENDER LITTLE BRAIN
i worked at chilis for 2 years and was there when they introduced our ghost kitchens (it’s just wings & magianos italian kitchen) i worked mainly as a server and bar tender but they made all of us take a class in ghost kitchens and it was so odd. they basically told us “we’re lying to our customers, but it’s ok it’s fun!!!” i also had to deal with a bunch of very confused delivery drivers wondering why there maps took them to a chilis when they were supposed to be picking up from “a new local restaurant” it was so sketchy
I just wanna say I'm really glad you're covering this. As someone with a disease which results in me constantly checking nutrition facts and inspecting any food I eat, I completely understand why the health concerns of Ghost Kitchens are very important and I think this needs to be covered in every news outlet. The thought of an unsanitary monopoly running 80% of the food production in my 8 mile radius is unsettling and honestly needs to be condemned more.
I have food allergies and I can't use meal delivery at all any more. Even if it's a "real" restaurant that I can telephone and talk to about allergies, the staff are so overworked, understaffed, underpaid, and often the kitchens are too small for the number of requests that come in, cross contamination is just too easy for them, and too risky for me. Uber Eats has sent me to the hospital 4 times even after calling the restaurant and ordering from "allergy safe" restaurants. Though it's even getting hard to cook from scratch at home because of things "processed on shared equipment", finding certified allergy free staple ingredients like rice and oats is really expensive.
wow. never really thought of people with food allergies and stuff. must suck to order onling. thers some stores that only have names of their foods and nothing else and even i think, "What the hell even is this?" crazy to think Eddie has spoken up about this and not the news/polital shows
Plus… I know there’s a lot of debate about tech being ethical for the economy and job production, especially since people are still wanting and enjoying eating out (even if it’s just a quick drive thru), but… this is concerning to me if this type of thing becomes more prevalent for the restaurant/fast food industry lol
@@maddymueller6860 I've seen so many people go from having savings drop back to waiting for paychecks cause the delivery apps have made normal accessible options unavailable so 17 dollar stress burgers.
I worked at Chili’s and the kind of ghost kitchen that uses existing chains puts a huge strain on the Kitchen staff as well. The restaurant makes all of the money, regardless of where it comes from, but they can only schedule employees based on what the main restaurant makes. There’s no “It’s Just Wings” employees, it’s the Chili’s employees that have to basically take on double the workload for the same pay. It’s scummy on top of it being super weird to be eating food from a restaurant that doesn’t serve that food to begin with. Don’t buy from these ghost kitchens, please. Edit: I also want to add that the tips that you pay on DoorDash or Postmates go to the driver only, they don’t go to the employees at the restaurant, which I also find super scummy.
Same. I worked at a local restaurant and the owner decided to run essentially a ghost kitchen out of it only for Doordash. It stressed the hell out of kitchen cause they had that, him bumbling around the kitchen making the food for it, and dealing with the dining room/our own doordash orders
A friend of mine works at a local sushi place and she’s thinking of quitting for that same reason. It’s truly infuriating that restaurants abuse their employees in this way and there’s still very little regulation.
These ghost kitchens were probably a good idea during lockdown times when nobody was going out to eat, now. . .i dont know. Like you said, more work for no extra pay.
Tips are meant for a service. The kitchen is getting paid a normal wage, servers and delivery drivers are not. When I was delivering, my hourly wage was about $5 an hour. I needed the tips to survive. Why do you feel that the driver’s tip should go to the restaurant? Doesn’t make sense.
@@Guywithaclub it should go to the back of house staff, or at least a portion should; I understand that the delivery driver needs the tip the most, but the kitchen is the one who has to deal with to-go orders and in-house orders. Like I said, the staff at a restaurant is almost working twice as hard to satisfy the DoorDash/Postmates orders as well as the restaurant orders, so I felt like they should be properly compensated for their work.
