[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.