[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.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

I mean,they could get better bags that keep the food warm,or a "heating spot" downtown to heat the food,but it's prepared in the kitchen? I don't see how it's impossible,just nobody willing to invest in the Business model that's not a scam

[ElevenLathe]

I think inequality is part of the story here too, even with restaurants generally. 60 years ago, it was reasonable to save some money at your union factory job to open a restaurant. If it didn't work out, you could go back to the plant and finish out your 30 years and retire with a full pension.

Now, I'm a top decile professional and would basically have to bet my whole net worth, including my retirement money, if I wanted to open a real restaurant. No wonder chain restaurants rule the day and the only thing interesting happening in food in most of the country are in food trucks. Ghost kitchens, at least a few years ago, seemed like a logical next step after the food truck: an even less capital-intensive way to get into the food service business.

The same forces will push someone who has this ambition to go the ghost kitchen route. Hopefully failing this way instead of with a fully staffed restaurant has saved at least one family from total ruin (downgraded instead to partial ruin).

[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.

[croon]

A ghost kitchen is like an LLM or an ephemeral container, or any stateless instance. Even if you could impart some feedback, it would be gone by the next time you place an order.

[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.

[timr]

Greek diners in NYC are a miracle to me. The food isn't the greatest, but it's good enough, and the huge diversity of menu items (usually made by one guy in the back), served for decades, is enough to make me wonder if there's something I'm not understanding about the business -- like secretly they're running 50% gross margins, or the meat is all rat.

[smelendez]

Land and rent used to be cheaper, and a lot of people come through the door. The margins on a lot of diner food, like eggs, ground beef, and coffee and fried potatoes, were at least historically fairly high. People in NYC also historically ate out a lot.

I think longtime NYC restaurant owners often love being a community hub, particularly if they’re first generation Americans, so they’re not thinking of how to squeeze the customers or follow the latest fads.

A lot of stereotypical “ethnically owned” businesses in NYC also have their own supply chains. It’s very possible they are or were buying from Greek-American wholesalers who are effectively buying in bulk for diners across the city.

My impression in general is also that people who’ve worked in the NYC food business for a while in general know their preferred vendors to call for any particular thing, from whole chickens to pest control, and that if you tried to compete with them by finding vendors on Yelp or whatever without those relationships you would be at a complete disadvantage.

[_DeadFred_]

The pre-MBA enshitified world was an amazing place.

[timr]

Oh, they're still here. They just close earlier since 2020.

[palmotea]

> 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.

Is that just tech founders, or American business culture, generally? Seems like everything's getting corners cut to the maximum extent possible.

[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.

[astrange]

I don't feel like I've ever been let down by an airport restaurant or Starbucks (not that I think about it much).

But the airport newsstands that are just someone selling candy in a room with the name of a random local newspaper are an interesting local sight.

[macintux]

I like airport newsstands because they remind me a tiny bit of my rare trips downtown as a kid, when there were one or two places still open that sold magazines like The Atlantic and The Economist. Such a delight at the time.

[JohnFen]

True, which may be a large factor in why restaurants in airports tend to serve overpriced crap.

[saulpw]

Airports have a captive audience.

[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.