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 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
$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.
These are microwave foods also, we as direct seen them cook it. Most of the stuff comes prepacked then they have airfare type microwave an then assemble box up an that’s it.
@@thereturnofthemac The issue is that they flood the entirety of the online food market, large companies drowning out small businesses. Literally missed the entire point.
@CErra310 well we dont know much the ghost cooks are getting paid, they are probably minimum wage, also i doubt you can use a name of a ghost kitchen as a reference when looking for a new job
Eh. Honestly, I am cool with it. More competition is better as long as they're not owned by bigger companies. Less competition allows larger corporations to maintain a strict leash on the market and trust me, you do not want that.
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.
@@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.
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.
The only problem with ghost kitchens is flooding the apps with their clones. They should be held accountable for it in the platforms. The apps should aim to offer this transparency and protection to their customers.
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 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
Very humbling moment watching this video for the first time, hearing the words "Tender Shack" and having a crime drama-style flashback to all the times I had ordered from them assuming I was supporting a local business and not just Secret Chili's. Nobody is immune to getting played by big corpo, and if you think you are you probably already have been and just never realized
Funny thing is people hate big corpo for being identity fluid and giving them food they enjoyed. They knew you hated them and just turned that hate to profits and gave you something to love. Brilliant. Sure it's deception but anywhere else it's praised. The health inspections could end up bad though. If they just make a new online restaurant to get around it that ain't good. That kinda deception is an even greater risk most wont ignore.
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.
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 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 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 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+
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 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
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
@@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.
That, and the ego of the American consumer. We’re all obsessed with things being niche, customizable, etc… The fact someone can stick their nose up to an iHop menu, while simultaneously ordering and enjoying food from the iHop menu says a lot.
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?
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
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.
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
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.
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 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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ☺️
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.
More importantly this should be regulated by your country to not be allowed under false and irresponsible and intentionally misleading advertising laws. It's not allowed over here.
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 !!! ❤️
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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
This is the classic tech startup model. They don't "revolutionize industries" they make money by skirting regulations (in this case worker safety and health regulations) and either the regulations catch up (e-scooters, weWork) or we just sorta accept them as a thing because lots of people use them (Uber, Airbnb). In almost every case it's labor regulations they avoid, so it's workers who carry the burden of these short term profits.
They wouldn't ever add the tag that tells you it's a virtual restaurant. They would lose money if people stopped shopping at those places and if those places started closing down.
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.
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.
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.
As a DoorDash driver these are facts! I pick up all the time from ghost kitchen's.These ghost kitchens are there to allow the customer access to these restaurants and their food. In areas where there's too much of an expense to have a brick and mortar building for each of them. We pick up from DoorDash Kitchen which is 1 storefront and kitchen making food for 15 plus restaurants. For places like Chick-fil-A Wingstop. We also will get sent to places like Denny's, Red Robin, or some random sushi restaurant and pick up for Mr Beast Burger or Danny's Trejo's Tacos. I always tell my customer if it came from a ghost kitchen. That way they know for next time. Sending love from Los Angeles 💛💜
@@Typicalanimefangirl95 First time it took me 5 minutes of driving around before I got out of the car at the pin on the map to explore. Thankfully I happened upon a waiter from Denny's in the parking lot having a cigarette. I Asked him if he knew where the restaurant was and he sent me inside Denny's. After that I understood to trust the address they sent you to. Not the name on the building and it became easier.
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.
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
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.
As a small business owner (not necessarily food, but...) I'm so sick of influencers, big tech, big businesses, etc., coming in and destroying everything we've worked to accomplish. If it weren't for these business owners, nothing would run...truthfully. Everything would skyrocket in price, consumers would be incredibly unhappy by the lack of product availability and variety, etc. This is just BS.
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.
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
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'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.
This raises some concern for things like allergies. If you have something like a shellfish allergy and you order from a burger place that doesn't have a single piece of shellfish on the menu, you would probably assume it is safe for your allergies, but if the food is coming from a place selling dozens of different types of cuisine without disclosing that information, you could be in danger.
yup! that’s me. it’s especially bad if something is deep fried in the same oil as shellfish - it turns the oil into a concentrated shellfish infusion. it’s like making tea. then that oil soaks into the batter of whatever else is fried in it. i only get deep fried from restaurants that don’t have shellfish, but with ghost kitchens, i won’t be able to know for sure. it could honestly kill me.
This has happened to me. I'm allergic to eggs, fish, peanuts, and treenuts so shit gets wild. I've burned through a bunch of epipens these last few years on takeout I have had many times before and even double checked after the event that triggers weren't present in a way that's dangerous for me. I felt like I was going crazy. At this point chipotle is safe and nothing else is. I was trying to figure out why and this video is making me think I've found the issue...
i imagine that this shouldn't be a concern LEGALLY... as far as i'm aware, every food producer is supposed to disclose if things are made in the same facility as an allergen. as long as the fda is strict on that, things should be okay.. hopefully... lol. then the main issue would be making sure these shared kitchens don't make it so that real restaurants who do have separate kitchens are inaccessible to those with allergens, right ?
The delivery apps should require menu listings to name all possible allergens in a restaurant's kitchen, but Joe Lycett was able to get Uber Eats to allow orders to be placed from a "kitchen" located in a dumpster so I won't hold my breath.
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.
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.
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 virtual kitchen is a little scary for someone who has intense nut allergies. Like if you can't eat peanuts and you're getting tacos but there's a Thai place in the same building, is there a possibility the bag could get contaminated by a little peanut sauce? It seems like they definitely need warnings to indicate that the food is prepared in a place where certain allergens could be present.
This is something i didn't even think about definitely needs more likes. When he mentioned the 44 restaurants operating out of the same kitchen the possibility for cross contamination is damn near guaranteed.
It’s definitely a cross-contamination disaster waiting to happen if they’re experiencing worker shortages. Less workers and more work creates a larger margin of error when it comes to sanitization. Seems like it could easily become a lawsuit if there were to be simple errors.
Dude I didn't think about this either. I have a digestion-related shellfish allergy that takes about 30 minutes to an hour to hit me after I've eaten literally any amount. If I got sent the wrong food, or contaminated food, I could easily end up in the hospital and have no idea what caused it.
This is.. eye opening to whats killing the industry right now. As a manager, I had no idea of this, and now I'm starting to think that this is why my order prices are so high and everything is always sold out. There is a business 3 blocks away that is 38 restaurants. They are ordering 38 restaurants worth of food.
Just because they are 38 restaurants doesn't mean they are ordering 38 restaurants worth of food. Most likely it's reducing orders across all people on delivery apps and waters it down a bit, still sketchy for other reasons but at most it's like 3-4 restaurants worth of food with shared menu items across all of them.
I forgot the fact that most restaurants ordering food are also ordering for delivery and in house if they even do delivery so there is the ghost kitchens order cut in theoretical half aready if a business is 50/50 in house and delivery, which as someone that used to work in the fast food industry only like 10% of our orders at most were delivery during the peak of COVID
There was also the one point he made where there were a lot of restaurants in the same location with overlapping menu items meaning they could get away with ordering less over all stock, it’s more like 1 restaurant with a slightly too big menu but spread out to make the menu itself look less daunting
In theory. Most of those "38 restaurants" share all the exact same item. 20 of them all have the same burger, another 12 all have the same chicken salad, whatever The difference is in the bag it comes in, thats all
As others mentioned, they aren't ordering 38 restaurants worth of food, they're just advertising their restaurant 38 times under different names. This increased traffic makes them go through inventory faster than you, but not at 38 times the rate. As the video mentions, they sell the same products under different names, and a lot of that is gather data about what brands resonate most with consumers so they can make those adaptations in different markets.
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 🙄
The other super messed up thing about ghost kitchens is they break up communities. People never meet the people working for them. It's sad. Also, ghost kitchens can be really expensive for business owners, especially in towns where commercial space is scarce.
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.
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.
This is a very informative video. I really enjoyed the content. Also, very eye opening. I suddenly feel smart (instead of cheap) when I opt to run to the restaurant instead of opting for a delivery app service, when I want a quick meal without the hassle of cooking it myself.
“Ghost kitchens” are literally just food distributors and shouldn’t be allowed to represent themselves as a brick and mortar restaurant whether they sell directly to consumers or not.
I dont actally see the issue with them calling themselves restaurants. It's not like they're advertising that they have a dining area for you to go to, and I don't think anyone has ever complained that they weren't able to eat out at a ghost kitchen. Once you remove the dining area, a restaurant is just a kitchen, and the people taking the food from the kitchen to the customer.
@@fishbiter9409 "Once you remove the dining area, a restaurant is just a kitchen" - yes, then call them so and not a restaurant as having this dining area is basically included in the definition of a restaurant thus it is advertised. There is nothing inherently wrong with that concept imho (at least nothing I am aware of now) but it is misleading to the customer as it influences the costs but makes judging the pricing harder. With a restaurant I have a vague idea of additional costs like higher rent or staff costs but now it becomes harder to evaluate the pricing.
@@Gruftkriecher Got a point there: if it only supports order out, call it a kitchen. If it sometimes seats people and sometimes doesn't, though, would it be okay to call it a restaurant?
@@fishbiter9409 Restaurants are also required to have amenities like public bathrooms and places to wash hands. "Just a kitchen or something" does not necessarily have to meet those requirements.
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.
Personally the most horrifying part of this is paying 17$ for a burger.
Bro, I’m in Mexico and you can get like 30 crazy delicious tacos for that money
And sadly, people will pay that.
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.
@@fennec2395mexican here too,in my city we have a taco place that sold them for 7 pesos a piece,now it’s around 11 but still great😊
and then taking one bite of every one
Doordash now labels virtual kitchens after backlash from this video. Good on you for exposing!
Do they? I’m looking at a virtual restaurant right now on door dash that is not labeled
@@ShaneBarbera might be a local legislation thing
really? that's what got me to uninstall doordash like, two years ago, so i may go back if they do label them now. thx!
I'm assuming it marks the "factory style" ghost kitchens, not ghost kitchens run in an already existing restaurant
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
$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.
These are microwave foods also, we as direct seen them cook it. Most of the stuff comes prepacked then they have airfare type microwave an then assemble box up an that’s it.
@@putjesusfirst9217yea those cod sandwiches were clearly microwave food LMFAO what TF….just stop
Its almost like people don't have to order from these places if the foods not good
@@thereturnofthemac The issue is that they flood the entirety of the online food market, large companies drowning out small businesses. Literally missed the entire point.
@@voidtransmits this is no different from any industry.
It's basically restaurant dropshipping.
It rlly is tho
with the slight added benefit that it's still being worked on by local labourers instead of taiwanese child slaves
@CErra310 well we dont know much the ghost cooks are getting paid, they are probably minimum wage, also i doubt you can use a name of a ghost kitchen as a reference when looking for a new job
Eh. Honestly, I am cool with it. More competition is better as long as they're not owned by bigger companies. Less competition allows larger corporations to maintain a strict leash on the market and trust me, you do not want that.
@@SinlowMusic Disagree. This is a race to the bottom.
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.
Felt the same when I discovered my local "Mr. Beast Burger" is being served by Perkins.
You want authentic chiense food? Go to china and enjoy the salmonella
@@jijitters Mine is in a Huddle House..
@@BeccaBearSc Ruby Tuesdays for Me, and I only know this because a friend was confused as fuck when he started doing doordash
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.
Jacksfilms just appearing out of nowhere only to host a focus group is incredible
Yeah, I was surprised no one recognized him
He's the perfect focus group kind of dude
@@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.
Thats actually just his day job
It's the most jacksflims thing to do
this majorly sounds like a tax avoidance thing, i'm betting each 'business' counts 1/40th of the revenue but 100% of the costs
Can’t fool the IRS… stealing your money is what the government does best.
Starbucks signed a partnership with a ghost kitchen here in Austin. Now delivery lattes are made by folks stuck in a windowless factory environment.
All the more reason to not buy Starbucks. 😀
Not shaming anyone who does. We all get to decide what we like and where we spend.
Jacksfilms randomly running the focus group had me absolutely giggling, he is the unemployed friend
SAME AHAHS suddenly he was just- there.
can you imagine you go for a focus group and it's just casually run by Jack lmaooo I'd lose my mind
Ah hell nah did bro really just call him jacksfilms bro it's jjjacksfillms
I 😅 .j. I
@@dizo-jp2tdyoure the type of person (or bot) that turns people against your religion by constantly shoving down our throats
the fact that eddy does not once comment on the fact that jacksfilms is running his completely legitimate focus group is so funny
true lol
Literally came here to say this I thought I was going insane lol
that threw me for a loop 💀💀
Jack is that guy
Why is that funny?
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.
So?
I can totally see a future where VDC owning a monopoly on delivery and takeaway without getting taxed properly
Lmao, okay. 😂😂.
Those who want an experience will get out of their homes to be there. Do you offer anything special?
The only problem with ghost kitchens is flooding the apps with their clones. They should be held accountable for it in the platforms. The apps should aim to offer this transparency and protection to their customers.
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.
Every time Eddy said “I lied” my eyebrows just kept getting higher and higher. Jaw on the floor. Absolutely flabbergasted.
no literally i thought theres no way the number could get higher
44 goddamn restaurants in one building. I think he said 77 in his area total? Goodness
@@kingsrevenge9234 no
@@thecole_ do not engage with bots. They only exist for engagement.
Instructions unclear... Maximum flabbergast exceeded... My eyebrows are now caught in the ceiling fan, send help
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
And Chuck E Cheese is like the worst pizza out there
wait are you from new orleans?
That dayumn Carlos E Queso!
Isn’t Pasqually the guy in the Chuck E. Cheese band
@@marmalar Y*
Very humbling moment watching this video for the first time, hearing the words "Tender Shack" and having a crime drama-style flashback to all the times I had ordered from them assuming I was supporting a local business and not just Secret Chili's. Nobody is immune to getting played by big corpo, and if you think you are you probably already have been and just never realized
Funny thing is people hate big corpo for being identity fluid and giving them food they enjoyed.
They knew you hated them and just turned that hate to profits and gave you something to love. Brilliant.
Sure it's deception but anywhere else it's praised. The health inspections could end up bad though.
If they just make a new online restaurant to get around it that ain't good. That kinda deception is an even greater risk most wont ignore.
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.
Good on you for being conscientious.
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!
Imagine if Eddy was called to give testimonials in front of Congress about ghost kitchens or something
Holy shit let's gooooo
@theVergeRemnant Journos just using ai now lol. Ghost journos.
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
As of today, DoorDash now has virtual kitchens labeled. Eddy, you are the ultimate influencer 🤣
Wait really???
@@DanKnowsNothing lol i have no idea what they're talking about, i just went on and it's not labeled at all
@@LSSTmusic they actually did! i looked up mr beast burger on the app and it said “virtual brand”, other ones had it too :)
edit: spelling
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 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 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+
Why would anybody want to be a food delivery boy??
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.
The CCP strategy for territorial expansion.
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.
They are taking up “shelf space”. It’s a concept used in physical retail for decades.
This feels wierd coming from someone with a Wendy's pfp
On doordash they added “virtual brand” next to the name of ghost kitchens. A step in the right direction. Great video eddy
Don't you have to tap on it, scroll past whatever group discount there is and then find it?
Unfortunately not all of them have it
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
i read eddy as daddy and just took it as normal until i saw it twice
@@JustHyden 😅⁸
The bit where the focus groups hate his terrible logo is one of the funniest parts of any youtube video I've ever seen
The whole segment, but especially that, was very reminiscent of Nathan For You.
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
Jacksfilms showing up as the focus group instructor was almost as big of a plot twist as when Defunctland revealed that shape world was real
Holy shit the Defunctland video blew my mind, too. I hope that Eddy features more of his pals in videos. A very pleasant surprise!
I love eddy’s viewers and how we all get this reference 💀
Darn shame this video doesn't include a chapter on the Dillon family, so it's automatically worse.
this but its when defunct land revealed that the music they were using for the entire disney theme video was the same composer
@@liv_hann oh my God. When I tell you the tears that came out of my eyes.. just sobbing. Kevin really put his heart and his soul into that episode. 💜
as shady and sketchy these ghost kitchens are, i appreciate that they hired Bob Belcher to name literally every restaurant and menu item
I can definitely hear him saying "welcome to Burger Bitch" in my head.
Like the whole branding and stuff just feel...synthetic. Its like "fake" with different restaraunt names serving the exact same food.
@@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.
@@emstink Its like that one spongebob episode where Mr. Krabs sells his Krust Krab restaurant to the suits.
Seems ai generated
This is also a really great video on the illusion of choice
That, and the ego of the American consumer. We’re all obsessed with things being niche, customizable, etc… The fact someone can stick their nose up to an iHop menu, while simultaneously ordering and enjoying food from the iHop menu says a lot.
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?
Can't taste through the ass
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
I love to do food videos while smoking weed on my CZcams channel, to cure people’s boredom ✨
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
Literally same omg 😭i love meltdown tho that shit is fire
"The meltdown" may also lead you to my bathroom after ording 9 cod sandwhiches, sorry man
@@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 feel like I'd feel less bad if they didn't masquerade as multiple businesses. Like that feels like a slippery slope to a new kind of monopoly.
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.
@@zdal7742 🙄 wow y’know what. That doesn’t change fuckin anything. Cool factoid jerry
It's a slippery slope for the common person. It's an escalator for the corporations behind this shit.
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.
@@zdal7742 china doing it makes it more shady and I hate it more thanks 🤣
You know these hamburgers are quite similar to the ones they have at Krusty Burger
Ohohoh no! Patented Skinner cod sandwiches, old family recipe!
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
I was wondering if this would happen. It seems on the cards
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.
That's what I was thinking. It's essentially money laundering but with bad reviews
Oh shit you’re right
same shit as airbnb ff just be deleting bad listings and popping out new ones
This is why they also double as a 10/10 data harvesting method for Mr.Beasts company/corp lmao
lol if they just use thermal printer stickers then it literally costs them nothing to rebrand as they're printed off only when needed
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!”
Same! I was so confused trying to find restaurants that didn’t exist, like why am I at chillis rn 😭
@@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 😅
@@maddyh.3447 you gotta be careful out there, sometimes people will setup fake places so they can rob people who go out there.
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 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!
I'm losing faith in humanity more and more. I gotta go to sleep.
Not gonna lie, I felt pretty proud when I guessed 30 resturants, only to have my wind taken out of me when Eddy said it was 44 instead.
Exact same number I guessed, and then I got concerned when he left the fourth corner of the screen empty.
I guessed 10 bro, is this ego death?
I guessed 40 but even I wasn't exact
I guessed 10 and thought i was cool. :(
I guessed 5 :(
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.
@@spagooter1807If you can afford to spend $50 on a delivery, you have the money to tip
@@spagooter1807 tips go to the delivery drivers though, not the cooks. Unless I’m mistaken.
The Amazon warehouse employees of the kitchen world … sounds so horrifying
@@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.
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.
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.
Oh, she was also required to have a commissary, which I'm sure everyone else utilizes.
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.
I’ve found a few here in New Orleans that are just houses!
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.
WHy should they just pay you more?
It is your job to negotiate your wage and make what you are worth... Even if it means leaving lol.
@@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.
@@delilahjessop9055 even in a small valley restaurants had 2 choices. Raise prices and wages or shut down because they had no employees
@@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 ☺️
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.
More importantly this should be regulated by your country to not be allowed under false and irresponsible and intentionally misleading advertising laws. It's not allowed over here.
No joke, a Mr Beast burger in my city operates out of a Ford dealership. I was so confused when I went to pick up my order.
😂😂😂😂
That is the funniest shit I've heard
Grilled Ford Tough 😂
How much was the dealer prep?
@@notgray88 You win the comments.
i remember when merch used to be a hoodie, or maybe a phone case if you were extra fancy. we're out here dropping burgers now 💀
your still alive hope everything in live is going well
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 !!! ❤️
❤❤❤❤
Hope you're doing well ❤️
@Llify he’s been away for a while and a lot of Fans have been worried, including me.
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
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.
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.
That is the general life of line cooks in most commercial kitchens i promise and it sucks.
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.
It's actually evil
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?
Ye
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
Thank you for making this video. I've been melting down over virtual kitchens privately for a long time. Glad to see other people feel the same way.
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.
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
yeah! i didn't even know these existed 😲
What's it like to work inside of a ghost kitchen?
@@x999uuu1 Spooky!?!
You've only known about ghost kitchens for 2 years? Dude I've known about them way longer than that lol.
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
As someone with a peanut allergy, this scared the shit out of me and I will not be ordering from these ever again. THANK YOU FOR COVERING THIS!!
Please be careful out there and carry your epi pen! My brother also has food allergies and this shit is scary
As someone who is not shilling for BK thank you for commenting this!
Make sure you have a Pepsi pen
imagine dying to a nut, but fr be safe
@@hay7501 Ah yes, the one thing every person with allergies needs: P E P S I
No because I have never subbed to someone so fast. Your energy and just vibe is amazing
I've always compared it to drop shipping food. It's interesting how there's different versions.
Finding out that Chuck E. Cheese ran a ghost kitchen of a pizza restaurant named "Pasqually's" will never fail to shake me to my core. Lol
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.
TIL
I ordered from a Chuckie ghost kitchen once, it still infuriates me and why I always google the address first.
@@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
3j lol
This is the classic tech startup model. They don't "revolutionize industries" they make money by skirting regulations (in this case worker safety and health regulations) and either the regulations catch up (e-scooters, weWork) or we just sorta accept them as a thing because lots of people use them (Uber, Airbnb).
In almost every case it's labor regulations they avoid, so it's workers who carry the burden of these short term profits.
This is my favourite comment on this video.
@@LeatherCladVegan woah thanks! I almost never comment. That's really nice of you to say.
Couldn’t have said it better. Self-serving assholes with egos far larger than their vision or morals
perhaps you should consider sharing more often; we need people like you
I concur, excellent comment. His the nail right on the head.
They wouldn't ever add the tag that tells you it's a virtual restaurant. They would lose money if people stopped shopping at those places and if those places started closing down.
This popped up randomly in my Autoplay, and it was really captivating.
I'll definitely check out some other videos of you.
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.
At least the delivery apps are good about refunding incorrect orders. For now anyway
The loser is the delivery driver who gets no tip and a bad review.
I love that Jacksfilms appears without any sort of warning to host the focus group LOL
Okay I thought I was crazy thinking that was him, thank you
@@sucyshi you can’t mistake that forehead as anyone else’s
@@variumi LMAO
Yeah, there needs to be a Jacksfilms content warning on this video
I worked for deliveroo for a while and the amount of 'restaurants' working out of people's homes was huge.
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 might be more concerned about it occupying a brick and mortar restaurant and putting an extra load on its service during busy hours.
didnt even think of that!!
given that a single fish sandwich was over sixteen dollars i think you may have a point.
It's just another tactic that the corporatocracy uses to exploit the working class.
Sorry. Home delivered crap food isn't a "vital resource " unless you are 28 or under and incapable of coping with life
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.
Welcome to “the food matrix”
@@solarisveritatis1086it’s a pyramid scheme just not legally yet
@@solarisveritatis1086😂
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.
As a DoorDash driver these are facts! I pick up all the time from ghost kitchen's.These ghost kitchens are there to allow the customer access to these restaurants and their food. In areas where there's too much of an expense to have a brick and mortar building for each of them. We pick up from DoorDash Kitchen which is 1 storefront and kitchen making food for 15 plus restaurants. For places like Chick-fil-A Wingstop. We also will get sent to places like Denny's, Red Robin, or some random sushi restaurant and pick up for Mr Beast Burger or Danny's Trejo's Tacos. I always tell my customer if it came from a ghost kitchen. That way they know for next time. Sending love from Los Angeles 💛💜
How often do u get lost bc of this?
@@Typicalanimefangirl95 First time it took me 5 minutes of driving around before I got out of the car at the pin on the map to explore. Thankfully I happened upon a waiter from Denny's in the parking lot having a cigarette. I Asked him if he knew where the restaurant was and he sent me inside Denny's. After that I understood to trust the address they sent you to. Not the name on the building and it became easier.
@sarahandy9981 yikes!
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.
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.
Can you sue them? I feel like you should be able to sue.
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
@@reilly4678well shellfishes are basically just water bugs
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.
it’s a shame that solutions for problems like that almost always end up being turned into vehicles for even more profit extraction.
That's really smart of her. Love an intellectual queen
I live in DC! i’d love to support
That actually gives me some hope. This video opened my eyes to a lot of the implications, not just the superficial stuff and the yelp rating avoiding
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.
This is one of my favorite videos that I've seen and I think about it a lot. Thank you Eddy.
As a small business owner (not necessarily food, but...) I'm so sick of influencers, big tech, big businesses, etc., coming in and destroying everything we've worked to accomplish. If it weren't for these business owners, nothing would run...truthfully. Everything would skyrocket in price, consumers would be incredibly unhappy by the lack of product availability and variety, etc. This is just BS.
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
I saw it more like a spy so good they are a ghost
The cutting edge espionage food 😂
This is 100% going in my D&D campeign notes
I like your brain ❤
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.
Bless your heart 😂❤
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.
Dude same! Like I got no instructions or heads up I was going to a ghost kitchen.
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
@@emweebee I’ve noticed the weird names too, they sound like they were generated by a bot. They honestly probably were lol
@@emweebee Bro. I don't wanna freak you out but.. Cook County??
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.
Yeah I found one called "the meltdown" but when I went to pick up the food it turned out to be Dennys
I 1000% AGREE that food apps should LABEL the VIRTUAL RESTAURANTS!!!
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.
Let the best apps label them. Consume only from them.
I think the practice should be illegal in general, but if that can't happen then the apps should outright ban them.
I like how "starting a food brand" is done the same as choosing your menu from the preselected items in Sims 4 Dine Out
💀 the accuracy
And people will make you feel bad for pointing out how stupid that is
oof yeah
Honestly. Kind of spits at those who make good food at local joints.
Works just as poorly too
This is amazing, Eddy great journalism.
Thank you for making this, it was the first video i saw to learn about Ghost Kitchens and was really helpful
This raises some concern for things like allergies. If you have something like a shellfish allergy and you order from a burger place that doesn't have a single piece of shellfish on the menu, you would probably assume it is safe for your allergies, but if the food is coming from a place selling dozens of different types of cuisine without disclosing that information, you could be in danger.
yup! that’s me. it’s especially bad if something is deep fried in the same oil as shellfish - it turns the oil into a concentrated shellfish infusion. it’s like making tea. then that oil soaks into the batter of whatever else is fried in it. i only get deep fried from restaurants that don’t have shellfish, but with ghost kitchens, i won’t be able to know for sure. it could honestly kill me.
This has happened to me. I'm allergic to eggs, fish, peanuts, and treenuts so shit gets wild. I've burned through a bunch of epipens these last few years on takeout I have had many times before and even double checked after the event that triggers weren't present in a way that's dangerous for me. I felt like I was going crazy. At this point chipotle is safe and nothing else is. I was trying to figure out why and this video is making me think I've found the issue...
i imagine that this shouldn't be a concern LEGALLY... as far as i'm aware, every food producer is supposed to disclose if things are made in the same facility as an allergen. as long as the fda is strict on that, things should be okay.. hopefully... lol. then the main issue would be making sure these shared kitchens don't make it so that real restaurants who do have separate kitchens are inaccessible to those with allergens, right ?
@@foxxxyg damn thats so fucked im sorry
The delivery apps should require menu listings to name all possible allergens in a restaurant's kitchen, but Joe Lycett was able to get Uber Eats to allow orders to be placed from a "kitchen" located in a dumpster so I won't hold my breath.
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.
Also they can monopolize the prices
@@tomyholloway6378 no
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.
@@gringo6362 how so?
chinese buffets in my area have been doing that since the 90s
Thanks for a good video with research on such obscure topic
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" 😀
His reaction after hearing them say it’s lame is comedy gold 😂
Personally it seemed pretty cool until he made the circle green.. 🤢
@@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.
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.
doordash labels ghost kitchens as “Virtual Brands” so it’s like 50% there
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 yes, obviously.
@@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.
@@itsgonnabeanaurfromme wearable merch isn’t a potential health code violation
It has been a LOOONNGG time since a video has earned my subbed. By damn I’m not sure if I’ve seen a video more deserving.
9:33 oh so perfect! Just found you and already love your humor!
The virtual kitchen is a little scary for someone who has intense nut allergies. Like if you can't eat peanuts and you're getting tacos but there's a Thai place in the same building, is there a possibility the bag could get contaminated by a little peanut sauce? It seems like they definitely need warnings to indicate that the food is prepared in a place where certain allergens could be present.
This is something i didn't even think about definitely needs more likes. When he mentioned the 44 restaurants operating out of the same kitchen the possibility for cross contamination is damn near guaranteed.
It’s definitely a cross-contamination disaster waiting to happen if they’re experiencing worker shortages. Less workers and more work creates a larger margin of error when it comes to sanitization. Seems like it could easily become a lawsuit if there were to be simple errors.
Do it for the lawsuit
@@EffYouMan its ready be they family suing if they don't get that epipen in time
Dude I didn't think about this either. I have a digestion-related shellfish allergy that takes about 30 minutes to an hour to hit me after I've eaten literally any amount. If I got sent the wrong food, or contaminated food, I could easily end up in the hospital and have no idea what caused it.
Eddy: "I hate themed restaurants!"
Also Eddy: "I love how this Virtual Kitchen gave me NASCAR-themed boxes"
PTSD from Rainforest Cafe and now Margaritaville lmao
Maybe he only hates margaritaville and rainforest cafe
To be fair, he doesn't have to go to every Nascar ghost kitchen in the country either lol
@@majesticapples9438 He seemed to enjoy Margaritaville- just not the menu lol
"I lied"
That's the money shot right there.
I haven’t used a food delivery service since 2008 when restaurants used to use their own delivery drivers.
Great video, man. just found your channel today
This is.. eye opening to whats killing the industry right now. As a manager, I had no idea of this, and now I'm starting to think that this is why my order prices are so high and everything is always sold out. There is a business 3 blocks away that is 38 restaurants. They are ordering 38 restaurants worth of food.
Just because they are 38 restaurants doesn't mean they are ordering 38 restaurants worth of food. Most likely it's reducing orders across all people on delivery apps and waters it down a bit, still sketchy for other reasons but at most it's like 3-4 restaurants worth of food with shared menu items across all of them.
I forgot the fact that most restaurants ordering food are also ordering for delivery and in house if they even do delivery so there is the ghost kitchens order cut in theoretical half aready if a business is 50/50 in house and delivery, which as someone that used to work in the fast food industry only like 10% of our orders at most were delivery during the peak of COVID
There was also the one point he made where there were a lot of restaurants in the same location with overlapping menu items meaning they could get away with ordering less over all stock, it’s more like 1 restaurant with a slightly too big menu but spread out to make the menu itself look less daunting
In theory. Most of those "38 restaurants" share all the exact same item. 20 of them all have the same burger, another 12 all have the same chicken salad, whatever
The difference is in the bag it comes in, thats all
As others mentioned, they aren't ordering 38 restaurants worth of food, they're just advertising their restaurant 38 times under different names. This increased traffic makes them go through inventory faster than you, but not at 38 times the rate. As the video mentions, they sell the same products under different names, and a lot of that is gather data about what brands resonate most with consumers so they can make those adaptations in different markets.
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 🙃
should file a suit and report it to the FDA
Even in random youtube comments we cannot escape the gluten free cabal lol
@@gabrielhowardMKE the what???
@@aphet just ignore him. Another idiot not realizing what food allergies are
@@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 🙄
The other super messed up thing about ghost kitchens is they break up communities. People never meet the people working for them. It's sad.
Also, ghost kitchens can be really expensive for business owners, especially in towns where commercial space is scarce.
you're not really meeting anyone of the local community when you order from ubereats regardless
Well damn, you had me fooled with the LA tavern focus group, excellent video!
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
thats 100% the case, just layers upon layers if something to cover the original if something went wrong
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.
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.
@@97I30T Yeah… that’s not news. Stop coming from Shane’s video
@@DeathnoteBB Shane? What the hell are you talking about?
@@97I30T There was a Shane Dawson "Conspiracy" video about how Trader Joes is just rebranded items.
@@I_Love_Learning dude they literally just described monopolies in industry that’s not a conspiracy theory lmao
This is a very informative video. I really enjoyed the content. Also, very eye opening. I suddenly feel smart (instead of cheap) when I opt to run to the restaurant instead of opting for a delivery app service, when I want a quick meal without the hassle of cooking it myself.
Just came across your channel. Love it
“Ghost kitchens” are literally just food distributors and shouldn’t be allowed to represent themselves as a brick and mortar restaurant whether they sell directly to consumers or not.
The profits are astronomical - 😱
I dont actally see the issue with them calling themselves restaurants. It's not like they're advertising that they have a dining area for you to go to, and I don't think anyone has ever complained that they weren't able to eat out at a ghost kitchen.
Once you remove the dining area, a restaurant is just a kitchen, and the people taking the food from the kitchen to the customer.
@@fishbiter9409 "Once you remove the dining area, a restaurant is just a kitchen" - yes, then call them so and not a restaurant as having this dining area is basically included in the definition of a restaurant thus it is advertised. There is nothing inherently wrong with that concept imho (at least nothing I am aware of now) but it is misleading to the customer as it influences the costs but makes judging the pricing harder. With a restaurant I have a vague idea of additional costs like higher rent or staff costs but now it becomes harder to evaluate the pricing.
@@Gruftkriecher Got a point there: if it only supports order out, call it a kitchen. If it sometimes seats people and sometimes doesn't, though, would it be okay to call it a restaurant?
@@fishbiter9409 Restaurants are also required to have amenities like public bathrooms and places to wash hands. "Just a kitchen or something" does not necessarily have to meet those requirements.
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.
It can feel good to work for your money
i did not expect to see you here xidnaf lmao
perhaps the time has come for another 3 minute video on an arbitrary but nonetheless interesting subject
Yeah but your body will love you in 25+ years for making money not wearing your back, knees, and hips out etc.
Lol yea people love to not work and just expect a check lame