[etblg]

The points the article make come close to my gripe with ghost kitchens but don't quite cover it:

they feel like scams and when I've accidentally ordered from a ghost kitchen it was by design a terrible experience.

I'm talking like, you order a 15$ main that is called "creamy pasta with prosicutto" and when it shows up its buttered spaghetti with a couple stamp-sized bits of ham. Ordering from actual restaurants come with some of the downsides the article assigns to ghost kitchens, like cold food and weird presentation, but ghost kitchens never seemed to reach the bar of "food someone would actually order, even if it was teleported to them instantly".

[x0x0]

They also scammed the operators. It was an Uber-esque ploy.

What actually got sold was an uber-esque scam: these kitchens were rented to tiny operators who, instead of opening their own restaurants, opened in a ghost kitchen facility. I read an in-depth article that showcased the extremely high failure rate of the operators. They were sold indiscriminately to anyone who could be suckered into doing it, with no thought of whether the "restaurant" was likely to succeed. The parallels to driving for Uber are obvious.

I actually suspect that ghost kitchens would work fine, but it would be one company operating them and carefully selecting products that sell and controlling for quality.

[tart-lemonade]

It always felt like a weird business model to me. If you lack a physical presence, the only thing you have over a decent prepared section at the grocery store is variety (and freshness, at least in theory). You don't even have convenience on your side since Instacart exists, and because the lower rent was predicated on leasing in more remote areas, the food is even less likely to be warm by the time it arrives than if you got groceries delivered.

And for the providers of the ghost kitchens, while they are selling a shovel of sorts, their bet was there would be a continuing market for their shovels. That space isn't likely to be used for any other restaurants because of the lack of foot traffic, but it also isn't likely to be used in large-scale food production because the facilities usually aren't large enough to be re-tooled for anything beyond catering companies. Commercial kitchen build-outs are not cheap, so investing in large scale small kitchen spaces is a risky bet.

[snowwrestler]

Yup, this is a crucial detail that the article sort of assumes the reader already knows: the companies being discussed are not actually cooking the food. They are ghost kitchen facility providers. Like WeWork for takeout/delivery cooks. And, surprise: they don’t print money any better than WeWork did.

[kelnos]

> They also scammed the operators. It was an Uber-esque ploy.

Should be no surprise. CloudKitchens, even, was founded by none other than Travis Kalanick.

[sien]

It's interesting to contrast to food trucks that are another method for more profitable places by reducing costs.

Food trucks seem to be pretty popular and work well.

Perhaps the difference is that food trucks are all about establishing a reputation for good cheap food that you can verify where as ghost kitchens wind up being the opposite.

[Fade_Dance]

Food trucks are also usually founded by a person with a vision and passion. Someone who wants to do something completely different with their life, a cook who thinks they have what it takes to go out on their own, etc, and that can be something that goes beyond even the reputational incentives.

Certainly not always, but I'd wager far more commonly than a generic ghost kitchen out of a shared kitchen with an Applebee's or out of the back of a cheap warehouse district.

[theshrike79]

In a food truck I can usually see the person cooking the food as well as the person giving it to me.

I will also eat the food close to the truck, meaning it's very little effort for me to go back and say "oi, this is shit, mate".

In a ghost kitchen you have zero way to actually give feedback to the kitchen itself.

[tstrimple]

Food trucks seem like they would involve more cost than a "ghost kitchen" and the branding on the truck especially will follow you around. If a ghost kitchen sucks, there is no cost in changing their name and maybe even their menu and continuing their bullshit. But there are real costs in re-branding and vinyling your food truck and food trucks deal with face to face business.

[toss1]

THIS:

>>"food someone would actually order, even if it was teleported to them instantly".

The article states >>Quality control became impossible. Shared kitchen facilities meant that one staff member prepared food for multiple brands simultaneously. No ownership. No accountability. Just assembly-line cooking with zero connection to customers.

I'm not sure if it was impossible or if management never actually prioritized it, not bothering to understand what an actual customer would want. How much of it is the stupid management assumption that they can "just make a dish generally meeting description X on the menu" and deliver that and it'll be ok? «— Real question, did mgt fail at the product specification level, or was QC just as a practical matter, impossible?

On the economics, it really seems 30% for delivery is insane. It seems that same 30% might exceed the cost of the physical restaurant. And when it adds a 15-45min delay while homogenizing and cooling the meal, it seems an impossible problem. Maybe if the 30% transported it instantly and losslessly...

Probably good this soulless idea will die. Too bad so much perfectly good capital was squandered on it instead of better ideas

[smelendez]

It really seems like it should be possible, but you have to put in the effort to develop recipes, buy minimum quality ingredients, and train the staff. Old school diners, especially Greek diners in the NYC area, used to be famous for their wide-ranging menus—burgers, spaghetti, spanakopita, chopped liver, etc.—and the food was generally pretty good. Cheesecake Factory has built something similar on a national level, and workplace cafeterias often aren't bad either, certainly not at the level of a ghost kitchen.

I think tech founders often underestimate what it takes to build a food business and what the margins are like and then start to cut corners to make the business viable.

[jeffbee]

> Just assembly-line cooking with zero connection to customers.

And this is how it works in many (not all) American airports. Local restaurants put their brands on the signs, but the food is prepared by probationary employees of Acme Baggage Displacement And Cafeteria Management Corp.

[6510]

Shops that run 100 different brand names usually do a spectrum of quality and pricing ranging from great quality and great prices to high prices with terrible quality. You might for example put a very similar item (if not exactly the same) on two different menu cards where customer B gets twice as much for half the price. B is the stability of the project while A is a disposable brand. If you can corner the market A conditions the customer to think B is a great deal.

[ori_b]

The selling point was efficiency, not quality. It follows that the result wasn't quality.

[Gigachad]

I mean they basically are drive by scams. They just flood the market with a million listings for the same kitchen, use some stock photos (AI generated now). And if you get bad reviews or food poisoning complaints you delete the business and list up 5 more.

[jerlam]

Don't forget the fake reviews (AI or not) and the soulless marketing campaign!

[xtiansimon]

> “I'm talking like…buttered spaghetti with a couple stamp-sized bits of ham.”

And? It’s not enough that someone makes crap food. The matter is when there is no market force to penalize crap food.

I thought platform feedback was a solved issue. Online sellers are (across the board in general) very focused on avoiding negative feedback.