The economic impact of the ghost kitchen will relatively be similar to the impact that Steam had on the gaming industry as it introduced seasonal huge sales &, for a moment, one of the worse kind of software distribution system ever (Steam Greenlight). Basically, the first phase (right now) is the redefinition of how food is valuated. At the moment, ghost kitchens are making a relatively huge margin that compete not too severely with the existing market in terms of final prices for each products. It's the phase that is the most profitable for new entrepreneurs and set the financial "expectations" for the next few years. It's basically like bait for anyone who want to make money in the food industry and there will be hundreds of biters in each region sooner or later as soon as the info of how much money each ghost kitchen makes come to light as well as how much it cost to set one up. This is relatively close to the point where Steam started accepting indie games on its platform (and the early stage of Greenlight) where you starting see record breaking games popping off (making hundreds of thousands per month). This will bring a massive raise in the concentration of businesses in every region for customers that will uses the app. At some point, it wouldn't be surprised if those ghost kitchen building also add a "order on place" machine shared among all ghost kitchens on site that would basically skip the online-order fees/costs. Basically turning those buildings in some sort of privately owned restaurants coops. The concentration of new business will, initially, be okay-ish, but as soon as people sees how much money roll in this process, it will get out of hand and that's when the competition will truly take roots. Newer and existing Ghost Kitchens will accept lower margin to win over the others or plan events along the year to get lots of customers over their competition. It will become basically like Steam seasonal sales where you can get up to 80% off your orders. (EDIT as I forgot to add this) This raise in businesses acting as ghost kitchens will create a visual and informative pollution which means that any unknown/small restaurants will be just snuffed out through the massive amount of available restaurants. Steam Greenlight created that effect on the gaming industry where, at its peak, it allowed over 350 new games to be released per month. Even today, Steam is still able to release over 1200 new games per year and the overall amount of games available for sale has breached the 34,000 early last year. Between 2022 and 2023, half of the games released on Steam made less than $1800 USD in 12 months after release and the top 4% made above 200,000 USD and only 0.2% made above 2 millions USD. This "seasonal sale" 2nd phase will be the start of the end for family owned restaurants that doesn't come up with some massive innovations and ideas that cannot be replicated by ghost kitchen. It will also have an INSANE impact on the perception of values for the customers: Why would someone buy a $12 sandwich if he can get one for 50% off elsewhere? (Remember that the Ghost Kitchens are often supported by the same companies: same ingredients, quality and only the hands of the cooks varies.) The Ghost Kitchen war will broke the food's value's mold. This has happened because of Steam for the video game industry as, today, only a fraction of people are willing to pay full price for any games since, at this point, over 80% of the released game comes on sale by the 6 or 8 months margin after its initial full price release point. (I myself have only paid 3 games full price in the last 3 years. Almost every games I have purchased, I waited for at least a 40% off sale if not a 60% or 80%.) As for the big restaurant chains, they will most likely adapt by closing some (or many) locations and turn them into ghost kitchens. (This was already happening during the pandemic.) They are ready for it already and are just waiting for the market to move toward it.
I sort of mage that argument concerning how turning a family business into a MrBeast burger during the lockdowns is supposed to help. You're just closing what is your actual resturant and replacing it with homogenized crap. It's WORSE than McDonald's because at least you still have to go through actual franchising rules including health inspections. It seems like VDC didn't care if you ran a MrBeast Burger out of a gasstation bathroom...in the basement!
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
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 !!! ❤️
Where I'm from it's not uncommon to have a lot of items on the menu because you can use the base protein for different recipes and they're all cooked to order.
@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.
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.
With the new info coming out about Mr. Beast now, it really puts things into perspective about how little he cared about the quality for how much he was profiting.
I mean, the concept of the whole thing was sus and crap to begin with. You're a Mom and Pop place...but the only way you can survive is not getting support to make your own food again, but to just make MrBeast's crap which is being sold everywhere. So how tf is that supposed to help?
@@notjohn5988 Nah, Mr. Beast is pretty much a bad person. He tried to use kids to help his Feastables brand to sell better at stores a.k.a asking them for hiding Herseys chocolate bars on display (store could kick you for doing that). Do you know what the reward for doing it was? A fucking gamble game on his website lmao fuck Mr. Beast
tbh we ignored his commercial attitude and actions which we all put off as slightly wrong but it is what it is, but his problems stem from more than years ago when he manipulated kids to clean up his candy in walmart or even when he manipulated kids into thinking they were going to get stuff in giveaways but most of the stuff went to people who had connections with mr beast (allegedly)[Mr Beast please don't send me a Cease and dissist]
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
And now Uber’s stepping in and delisting ghost kitchens that just reuse the same menus, as well as placing stricter rating requirements for ghost kitchens to stay listed.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
So basically, ghost kitchens are a nightmare for: - health inspectors, who can't keep track of where the food is made - delivery drivers, who have to pick up orders from restaurants that don't exist - food service workers, who have to manage the increased workload if their employer decides to run a ghost kitchen - customers, who are being straight-up lied to about who makes their food - small businesses, who are being pushed out by big corporate brands spamming delivery apps with fake restaurants In other words, everyone's lives get noticeably worse but at least a few people make some extra money. Yay, capitalism!
not to mention people with allergies. you might order something that's gluten or peanut free, only to discover the person who made your food handled bread or peanut butter right before they handled yours.
@@imaginarygrace-mov not only, also regular people who can end up in a hospital if the food is cooked in unsanitary conditions, you don't wanna know how many diseases can you get from food cooked god knows where
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.
@@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.
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 ☺️
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
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.
Me and my best friend went to go investigate a cookie place we’d never seen before and ended up in a parking lot at night with it nowhere in sight. We both quickly realized in that vacant lot that the dashmart next to us was the ghost kitchen.
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
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.
@@PatronSilverWave sometimes, it does depend on the place you are ordering from but it’s genuinely a despicable payment system that everyone in America has bought into. I tip workers but I firmly believe it shouldn’t be necessary or a vital aspect of pay. We have a lot of workers rights to fight for especially with ai coming.
I 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.
exactly!!!! as an adult, if I watched that mr beast video before I even knew what a ghost kitchen was, I would immediately be skeptical. but imagining I was a kid watching that, I'm certain that that would raise no red flags and i would think nothing of it. kids deserve better, this is so deceptive and gross.
Since when is it the kids' fault they were born into a late stage capitalist dystopia? The whole point is to catch people unaware and they have disposable income and the only responsibility they know is buying crap -- that they don't know is crap.
It actually doesn't surprise me that Cody Ko and Mr. Beast know each other with the allegations against both Ava and Cody (allegedly). Same with the guy who's on the SO list and still works for Mr. Beast.
It's not even the same. Beast has years worth of evidence against him for being a lying dirt bag. Cody got accused by some trashy whore. Not even the same.
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.
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
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
I live in a smallish town, which is just large enough to have 3 (confirmed) different burger restaurants, outside of the usual big chains like McDonalds, yet if you go to Menulog or Uber Eats, and there's well over a dozen different burger venues, all of them with virtually the same menu, virtually the same photos, just slightly different burger names... What troubles me most is the dishonesty of it... You have a bad experience with one version of the same restaurant, what's stopping you ordering from another version of the same restaurant, if you don't order food regularly? It's almost bordering on false advertising...
I dont think Eddy realizes how influential AND re-watchable this video is. People come back STILL to watch this and people are getting likes from days ago. Eddy, this is genuinely one of the best video essays I've ever seen. Amazing content.
@@mei8511 Seriously tho. Every few weeks or so it just...pops back up in my recommended. And I click on it every time. I never regret it even for a second.
I actually just started working at IHOP a couple weeks ago and had never heard of ghost kitchens before. What's even more wild about these kitchens is that even as an employee I can't order the ghost kitchen food in person, I would have to pay Doordash for the delivery fees. Like, I see the food right there. Give me some waffle fries.
I had the same thing. I worked for a restaurant and they had 3 virtual kitchens within it. I couldn't order anything on it, but we would package the food there. Super Dilla is a good example of one of IHOP's virtual kitchens
Man as a Uber driver you stole my video idea I’ve been thinking some people need to know chiquitos do like 5 different menus. Bao now kick as burritos. Franky and bennies do like 3 bone jam is one of them. It’s crazy man.
@@katharineball585 A lot of delivery apps have cracked down on ghost kitchens since this video. Might be coincidence, but given the amount of views, I have no doubt they got a loooottt of inquiries about this issue.
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.
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.
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.
Venture Capital firms are GREAT at finding ways to F everything up. The concept of ghost kitchens, while clever in many ways, will only serve to destroy small businesses.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
*Thanks for bringing this up. I worked at chilis in 2020, and I was forced to do THREE TIMES THE WORK for the same pay, because there were TWO ghost kitchens there. Was the worst time of my life. So glad I escaped that shithole.*
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.
I love that in the beginning of the video Eddy lied to us, admitted he lied to us and then lied again and again and then later he told us he was lying to the focus group and I was STILL surprised when it turned out he lied to us again
I could've sworn I saw that tag before as well, but just looked at mine at restaurants I know are virtual brands and couldn't see it anywhere, seems inconsistent
Is it going to stop you from eating there…no Humans just want to create drama from everything thing. It won’t matter tbh it’s just food and you need it. So you order no matter where it comes from.
I work as an UberEats driver in Philly and there’s this one guy in one food truck/trailer cooking for 13 different restaurants by himself. It takes longer than usual to pick up an order from him because it’s just him making them & imagine how many people are ordering from one of the 13 restaurants all at one time in or around Philly. It’s crazy
I live in South Philly and I legitimately started looking up addresses for every place I want to order from that isn’t a small business, because I use UE primarily. It’s so frustrating
Imagine if someone gave this guy enough startup capitol (5K?) to be his own thing. He wouldn't be working for minimum wage, could be making the same food, and be keeping the majority of the profit for himself. Perhaps Eddy Burback should get on that instead of spending thousands on focus groups? (Great video, Eddy. Not a criticism.)
Always fascinated by the amount of weird internet jank I avoid by buying everything directly from businesses' personal pages after looking up what's close to me on google maps.
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 🙄
There's a legitimate small restaurant near me called "Ghost Kitchen" that I avoided ordering from for a long time because I thought they were just being cheeky with the name. Then I drove by their site one day and saw they were an actual place that just chose a semi unfortunate name. Food ended up being amazing.
Maybe you should tell them? I'm sure if you thought that then probably lots of other people thought that as well. Maybe they could just change the name to "host kitchen" or "ghostly kitchen" or something
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.
I used to be a DoorDash driver, I’ve had a dennys employee tell me that they couldn’t give the customer a drink because they only had denny’s cups instead of the ghost’s restaurant’s ones. It honestly seems like they don’t want the customer to know where it comes from. Also, I had probably twice as many orders from “it’s just wings” than I actually did from chili’s, even though they’re the same restaurant.
That was so confusing the first time I got the order for a restaurant at the address of a restaurant, maybe chili's or similar. But they don't have any sign so I circled a few times before going in to see what's up and they said they only do this ghost company online. I guess to keep it secret from their normal customers. Really annoying as a delivery driver.
I work at Captain D's and that's exactly how it is. We run a ghost kitchen called Catfish Kitchen and it's just our catfish with the prices marked up and different packaging.
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.
Ghost Kitchens are such a silicon valley concept: It's not something which is inherently malicious, and I can understand the appeal of the concept. The idea of making a small restaurant or catering service more accessible to the average entrepreneur sounds great. The idea of making restaurants more resilient against lockdowns sound s great. Then, of course, you realize how in execution this leads to nothing more than franchises endlessly cloning themselves to evade bad reviews and health inspections.
This is a fantastic point. The nuance in this story is exactly as you stated. Accessibility is almost always a good thing UNLESS it allows entities to evade accountability. That's where I draw the line.
not only to evade bad reviews and health inspections, it's also definitely more profitable to take up multiple spaces in food delivery apps than just one
Bro got 10M views, it's still the most viewed video on his channel a YEAR later, AND he got mentioned in the Wall Street Journal and many other newsletters, making headlines, and he still refuses to take credit. The goat. Simply the goat.
I quit my last kitchen job because of ghost kitchens. We already had a 50+ item menu, with all you can eat wings on Wednesdays. We ran delivery through our own website, our phones, SkipTheDishes, Ubereats, door dash and our hometown delivery app. On top of all that, our corporate thought it would be wonderful to unload us with FOUR more menus in ghost kitchens. A Mac and cheese one, a chicken thigh one, a poutine one, and a desert one, all on top of our already huge menu. It’s making people quit kitchen jobs left right and center.
I mean, that's awful for you and I'm sorry it happened. But it should make people quit because these places shouldn't exist wth A job is a job, money is money but if you like cooking and you're passionate about it don't work in a ghost kitchen .~.
I just wanna say I'm really glad you're covering this. As someone with a disease which results in me constantly checking nutrition facts and inspecting any food I eat, I completely understand why the health concerns of Ghost Kitchens are very important and I think this needs to be covered in every news outlet. The thought of an unsanitary monopoly running 80% of the food production in my 8 mile radius is unsettling and honestly needs to be condemned more.
I have food allergies and I can't use meal delivery at all any more. Even if it's a "real" restaurant that I can telephone and talk to about allergies, the staff are so overworked, understaffed, underpaid, and often the kitchens are too small for the number of requests that come in, cross contamination is just too easy for them, and too risky for me. Uber Eats has sent me to the hospital 4 times even after calling the restaurant and ordering from "allergy safe" restaurants. Though it's even getting hard to cook from scratch at home because of things "processed on shared equipment", finding certified allergy free staple ingredients like rice and oats is really expensive.
wow. never really thought of people with food allergies and stuff. must suck to order onling. thers some stores that only have names of their foods and nothing else and even i think, "What the hell even is this?" crazy to think Eddie has spoken up about this and not the news/polital shows
Plus… I know there’s a lot of debate about tech being ethical for the economy and job production, especially since people are still wanting and enjoying eating out (even if it’s just a quick drive thru), but… this is concerning to me if this type of thing becomes more prevalent for the restaurant/fast food industry lol
@@maddymueller6860 I've seen so many people go from having savings drop back to waiting for paychecks cause the delivery apps have made normal accessible options unavailable so 17 dollar stress burgers.
@@robertalexander-bk5zjanother great reason is that Starbucks tastes like ass and, for the same price or cheaper, you can get a better coffee from a small business
I don’t mind ‘this is a real small business with a specific concept but we don’t have an actual dining room to save costs’ (although in my experience a lot of food is… not as good when it’s delivered lol) but I absolutely DO mind relabeling food, and running dozens of fake restaurants out of one kitchen. I generally order online from places I already know are good in person but now I guess that needs to be a rule, no ordering online if I haven’t seen it in person
There's one of those in my current town, a ghost kitchen set up for the local food truck concepts to do delivery and outdoor dining. I also used to frequent a ghost kitchen restaurant that was run by a retiree who made vegan soul food and she used the ghost kitchen because she could rent the space in a commercial kitchen.
Eddy's content is so wild. One minute you're watching a goofy 90's commercial, then a Groundhog Day/ Twilight Zone - like tour through Rainforest Cafès and then you are knees deep in the wildest investigation of your life. Amazing.
In my experience working at Chilis, having a ghost restaurant put a lot of stress on the workers. Often customers would come into the Chilis I worked asking where they could find It's Just Wings, and they would get SO mad at me when I told them that they could only order It's Just Wings food through Doordash. They DEMANDED to know why they couldn't just order It's Just Wings food in person at Chilis, and I had no good answer for them beyond "that's just the way things are," because tbh it is kind of silly that they couldn't just order their food like normal.
Frankly Raven if I was asked about why they can't just order the wings here I would tell them bluntly the system is really fucking stupid I didn't make the rules i also think it's a really dumb policy and I'm sorry for inconvenience caused
@kurtpunchesthings2411 yeah that's more or less what my answer boiled down to, when customers get upset there's very little you can say to appease them anyway. Thankfully I don't work there anymore!
My god that sounds horrible. Sometimes I'm actually super happy about living in my 3rd world burning corner, at least here even fast food is 80% of the time real, well, food.
Part of the issue I have with ghost kitchens, beyond everything talked about, is that if you actually order from one and the food is nasty, you now have 20 different restaurants clogging your search results that you know for a fact will suck
I hate hate hate looking at a menu on a delivery app and desperately trying to determine if the photo is an actual photo of the food or some fancy stock photo.
@@HeyLeFay hello my name is Jean Michel . I've work as a chef for prestigious restaurants. My education very limited I work kitchens and restaurants since the age of 12. Paid under the table until I was 16. I drop out in grade 9. But I've mastered cooking. I work work for Michelin star restaurants And 5 star restaurants. I was making brilliant money bought a house and everything. Covid hit and ghost restaurant became bigger. So the restaurant I work at Had not one or two or 3 but 4 ghosts kitchings for take out. From Greek food to mexican to Japanese food. I work 20 hours days cause of it. Zero days off I got depress hated cooking keeping up with the orders . I'd get orders wrong cause we had so many options . I started doing Cocaine to stay awake and function needed more and more and more . I kept pushing over 800 orders nightly I would yell at the other cooks I became worst and worst . I was fired Got a regular cooking job but they also added ghost kitchens I had no education exp for cooking . I was being paid less cause of my old job I got hook on coke lost my house my wife. And my kid . Now it's yes my own fault for falling into drugs to try and keep up with the work schedule but I was being paid 55$ hourly as a cook with no education. Cooking was all I loved and because of ghosts kitchings I lost my passion. I'm now clean from doing coke . But at what cost
@@HeyLeFay If the images look *too* clean, it's a stock image. Even the cleanest real images look a little bit ''messy'' because, unlike stock photos, they have actual food to take pictures of and it needs to look enticing for the customers.
Gotta be honest, I’ve been ordering from Uber eats quite often since the new year, just about every order I’ve had is pretty bad in terms of quality. It’s really not with a $20 mark up fee, plus tip, plus convenience fee, plus tax, plus delivery fee- which is different from tip, plus marked up prices compared to when you go in-store
when I heard 44 restaurants in one kitchen I immediately questioned "that's 44 different menus and hundreds of items for one kitchen??" and the cross-referenced menu items makes so much sense ie the fish sandwiches and wings. This seemingly over-abundance of new choices actually limits choice, just like with social media companies all doing the same thing now.
When I first realized ghost kitchens on the delivery apps here in Brazil, it was because there were restaurants that were almost a copy paste of each other, different name and logo (both absurdly bland) and the dishes were named different, but the pictures and descriptions of dishes (the things that take a longer time to make) were identical between two, three or even four places, with only minor changes in their menus.
@@NonsenseOblige I noticed it here in Brazil when I saw some known restaurants in my hometown advertising locations they did not have an actual restaurant at. When I went by the place I noticed it was only for delivery and what it seemed like a massive kitchen. Didn’t fully realize what ghosts kitchens were but I understand now, those places were an example of that.
@@Lucaz99 Oh, there's one of those in a big avenue not too far from where I live in São Paulo. It's just this big corner place that always has DOZENS of motorcycle and bicycle delivery people in front of it just waiting.
theyre trying to artificially make a monopoly. its like if your town had 20 grocery stores with different names but they were all owned by the same company, they are really just 1 company. except its much easier to make 50 companies that only exists online than to buy 50 different plots in the same town. its the same as drop shipping on amazon. there are many products on amazon where if you search for it you get pages of results that are all the same product made in the same factory in china but sold by different companies, and there are so many results you literally cannot find that product made by anyone else because that 1 product is 99% of the search results
For health and safety sake, I do think the multi-restaurant kitchens should be required to apply for a unique certification each time a new brand is added. This would encourage them to also make a lot less redundant brands because it would be costly to do so.
What's funny is that I guarantee you none of Congress or Senate is even aware of this stuff, even though they should be rapidly coming up with some solution
can we just talk about how great this video is? i find myself coming back to just watch it all over again and it still really captures me, thanks eddy!
As soon as you mentioned that it was multiple different "restaurants" in one kitchen my brain immediately went to allergy risks! I'm glad you touched on that part!
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.
@@theanxiouslegume9280 Nah it looked awful. The image quality for the burger was cheap like someone had ripped a stock low resolution image of a burger and slapped it together with a random quirky typeface. I'm embarrassed that he said he spent four days on it.
@@Dahpie I'm pretty sure he drew that burger himself. I think it's quite harsh to call it "embarrassing" that it took four days- he's new at this. Nobody is born with the skills to draw and design, so of course it took a lot of tweaking.
i worked at a mom and pop place that eventually stopped doing mobile orders because they’d always get cancelled. can’t blame the drivers; if they don’t receive a tip or the location can’t offset the price of gas, it’s literally not worth their time to pick it up. we ended up with a lot of unused/unpaid for food and had to remove our service from delivery apps. they were in business from 1995 to 2023, and closed down two months ago. yeah, this is the future. it sucks.
I worked in a place that had a ghost kitchen operating out of it and it was very strange. We barely ever had an order come in for the ghost kitchen but whenever we did we basically just took other food we already usually prepared and slapped a different sticker on the box. It was a weird concept to me at the time but I had nooooo idea how deep the rabbit hole went holy fuck
I worked at a place that did Mr. Beast burger, they have a specific menu so we had to buy specific ingredients to make it from a different supplier bc we didn’t serve anything like Mr. Beast burgers, but people used to come in all the time having traveled with younger kids usually thinking they could eat some Mr. Beast only for us to have to tell them that they needed to order it through an app and couldn’t eat it in the restaurant 😭
@Mattea Grace I get having to order it in the app, but not letting the kid sit and eat it in the restaurant is a little stern on the owner's part. Lol
the intentional deceit and obfuscation is what gets me. it's eerily similar to other techbro ventures like nfts and cryptocurrencies where it's intentionally hard for anyone to even figure out how they work
Don't even get me started on NTFs. I can't see paying money to own something that's only digital yet available to view by anyone with just a Google search. Just doesn't make sense and to me a waste of money
Another information that reaffirms my choice not to order out. The peace of knowing how my food was prepared and handled is worth the effort of cooking.
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 always had a weird feeling about ghost kitchens but I didn't even think about potential health code violations. Also the drama and production value of this video is insane. Now I want to see Eddy bust the ghost kitchens with an oceans 11 style crew
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.
This reminds me of toddler parenting. You make them think they have a choice when you're asking them to do something. "Do you want to go to bed in the red pajamas or the yellow pajamas?" They're still doing what you want but are satisfied that they got to decide how to do said thing. In this case, the business WANTS you to buy from them, but want you to think that youre choosing where to eat.
also if you went to Jhons Kebab and Steak and they had a Cod Sandwich, Kebab, Steak, Burgers, Chicken, Waffles, Pancakes, Thai and what not on the menu, you would think thats a cheap place that just does everything but nothing good
This is such a good analogy. Operating 40+ “restaurants” giving the illusion of choice to the consumers. I found the whole premise very disconcerting but you’ve described exactly why. I’m sure it’s greatly impacted actual small businesses as well.
What choice do you want in this case? For me it boils down to pizza vs burgers vs chinese vs ribs. I get delivery from places I tried and found good. Not because of the name on the front of the building. If the burgers are bad, I won't order burgers from there any longer. If the ribs are better than the last best place, I'll order from them from now on (though I will still try new places). The fact that the same company owns it is completely irrelevant to me.
Technology has ruined me. Cell phones are pretty much evil. Technology is exactly explained in this video. Certain humans that immoral thrive because it’s easier to rip you off. On the other side I’m sure it’s helped a lot of good.
The health inspection thing freaks me out so much. As soon as I found out about ghost kitchens i started only ordering from places I know exist as physical stores. I usually only did that before but now I don’t wanna browse delivery apps for new places cause of the risk. So sorry to actual small businesses I’ve inadvertently screwed but I don’t wanna get salmonella or kill my husband by accidentally giving him peanuts
Ordering from a known, physical restaurant is still no guarantee. In the video he talks about an article stating that Buffalo Wild Wings had 100 fruit flies in the restaurant. So even if you had avoided ordering from their ghost kitchen "Wild Burger" and ordered BWW instead you'd still be getting food from a fruit fly kitchen. In an ideal world restaurants that score below a certain grade would be temporarily unable to sell on the delivery services until they bring their score back up with the Health Dept.
@@charcoalanderson8010 yeah it’s grim.y husband and I have to be really careful where we eat because of his allergies so we have a few places we trust.
@@charcoalanderson8010 Heres the problem. Say you have 10 "Shops" operating out the same kitchen and one of those orders a customer gets food poisoning and they close possibly due to failed Inspection, they can just close that one "Shop" but keeps operating the other 9 out of the same location since they did not "Fail" the inspection.
As someone that owns a family owned restaurant this is infuriating. This will destroy us
The economic impact of the ghost kitchen will relatively be similar to the impact that Steam had on the gaming industry as it introduced seasonal huge sales &, for a moment, one of the worse kind of software distribution system ever (Steam Greenlight).
Basically, the first phase (right now) is the redefinition of how food is valuated. At the moment, ghost kitchens are making a relatively huge margin that compete not too severely with the existing market in terms of final prices for each products. It's the phase that is the most profitable for new entrepreneurs and set the financial "expectations" for the next few years. It's basically like bait for anyone who want to make money in the food industry and there will be hundreds of biters in each region sooner or later as soon as the info of how much money each ghost kitchen makes come to light as well as how much it cost to set one up. This is relatively close to the point where Steam started accepting indie games on its platform (and the early stage of Greenlight) where you starting see record breaking games popping off (making hundreds of thousands per month).
This will bring a massive raise in the concentration of businesses in every region for customers that will uses the app. At some point, it wouldn't be surprised if those ghost kitchen building also add a "order on place" machine shared among all ghost kitchens on site that would basically skip the online-order fees/costs. Basically turning those buildings in some sort of privately owned restaurants coops. The concentration of new business will, initially, be okay-ish, but as soon as people sees how much money roll in this process, it will get out of hand and that's when the competition will truly take roots. Newer and existing Ghost Kitchens will accept lower margin to win over the others or plan events along the year to get lots of customers over their competition. It will become basically like Steam seasonal sales where you can get up to 80% off your orders.
(EDIT as I forgot to add this)
This raise in businesses acting as ghost kitchens will create a visual and informative pollution which means that any unknown/small restaurants will be just snuffed out through the massive amount of available restaurants. Steam Greenlight created that effect on the gaming industry where, at its peak, it allowed over 350 new games to be released per month. Even today, Steam is still able to release over 1200 new games per year and the overall amount of games available for sale has breached the 34,000 early last year. Between 2022 and 2023, half of the games released on Steam made less than $1800 USD in 12 months after release and the top 4% made above 200,000 USD and only 0.2% made above 2 millions USD.
This "seasonal sale" 2nd phase will be the start of the end for family owned restaurants that doesn't come up with some massive innovations and ideas that cannot be replicated by ghost kitchen. It will also have an INSANE impact on the perception of values for the customers: Why would someone buy a $12 sandwich if he can get one for 50% off elsewhere? (Remember that the Ghost Kitchens are often supported by the same companies: same ingredients, quality and only the hands of the cooks varies.) The Ghost Kitchen war will broke the food's value's mold. This has happened because of Steam for the video game industry as, today, only a fraction of people are willing to pay full price for any games since, at this point, over 80% of the released game comes on sale by the 6 or 8 months margin after its initial full price release point. (I myself have only paid 3 games full price in the last 3 years. Almost every games I have purchased, I waited for at least a 40% off sale if not a 60% or 80%.)
As for the big restaurant chains, they will most likely adapt by closing some (or many) locations and turn them into ghost kitchens. (This was already happening during the pandemic.) They are ready for it already and are just waiting for the market to move toward it.
Real restaurant offer experience, not just food.
Those offer just delivery. Not the same thing.
I prefer a family owned restaurant I might try these places like once but a good local family diner will see me over and over
I love a good family owned place. They care about their business/product. There’s no comparison.
I sort of mage that argument concerning how turning a family business into a MrBeast burger during the lockdowns is supposed to help. You're just closing what is your actual resturant and replacing it with homogenized crap. It's WORSE than McDonald's because at least you still have to go through actual franchising rules including health inspections. It seems like VDC didn't care if you ran a MrBeast Burger out of a gasstation bathroom...in the basement!
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
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.
I don’t trust a restaurant that says they can cook 70 different menu items well, let alone one that claims they are 70 restaurants
Only one I’ll accept is the Cheesecake Factory. They got their methods down.
See, that's why those 70 restaurants all happen to serve the same 8 items under different names.
@@generalrubbish9513 lol loophole found!
They're all frozen pre made meals.
Where I'm from it's not uncommon to have a lot of items on the menu because you can use the base protein for different recipes and they're all cooked to order.
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.
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
With the new info coming out about Mr. Beast now, it really puts things into perspective about how little he cared about the quality for how much he was profiting.
I mean, the concept of the whole thing was sus and crap to begin with.
You're a Mom and Pop place...but the only way you can survive is not getting support to make your own food again, but to just make MrBeast's crap which is being sold everywhere. So how tf is that supposed to help?
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Remember when he told his followers to trash others' candy displays to help his own candy sales?
@@notjohn5988 Nah, Mr. Beast is pretty much a bad person. He tried to use kids to help his Feastables brand to sell better at stores a.k.a asking them for hiding Herseys chocolate bars on display (store could kick you for doing that). Do you know what the reward for doing it was? A fucking gamble game on his website lmao fuck Mr. Beast
tbh we ignored his commercial attitude and actions which we all put off as slightly wrong but it is what it is, but his problems stem from more than years ago when he manipulated kids to clean up his candy in walmart or even when he manipulated kids into thinking they were going to get stuff in giveaways but most of the stuff went to people who had connections with mr beast (allegedly)[Mr Beast please don't send me a Cease and dissist]
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
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 read eddy as daddy and just took it as normal until i saw it twice
@@JustHyden 😅⁸
And now Uber’s stepping in and delisting ghost kitchens that just reuse the same menus, as well as placing stricter rating requirements for ghost kitchens to stay listed.
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 UA-cam 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
My wife works for the Health Department in our city and she's literally sharing this video with her bosses.
THANK YOU ❤
what was the feedabck?
you aint share shit, stop the cap
@@multifaceteduser3405 a lot of small businesses use ghost kitchens as fronts to circumvent health code violations
😂😂😂@@yum_man
Literally? Or actually?
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
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 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!
I found one that was run out of a local Chuck E. Cheese.
so you either get fooled into giving money to a megacorporation pretending to be a small business, or you get food poisoning from Remy the Rat.
32:20 - "But [Jimmy Donaldson]'s also CEO brained..." is really aging like fine wine considering the allegations and lack of response.
Exactly 😭
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.
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.
Indeed, at this point the only way you can get heard from these places is through illegal means, and it is absurd!
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
So basically, ghost kitchens are a nightmare for:
- health inspectors, who can't keep track of where the food is made
- delivery drivers, who have to pick up orders from restaurants that don't exist
- food service workers, who have to manage the increased workload if their employer decides to run a ghost kitchen
- customers, who are being straight-up lied to about who makes their food
- small businesses, who are being pushed out by big corporate brands spamming delivery apps with fake restaurants
In other words, everyone's lives get noticeably worse but at least a few people make some extra money. Yay, capitalism!
And the tax authorities who cant keep up with the shell game going on
not to mention people with allergies. you might order something that's gluten or peanut free, only to discover the person who made your food handled bread or peanut butter right before they handled yours.
I hate that they have so much money, and yet they keep finding ways to screw the lower class over. Greedy mfs
@@imaginarygrace-mov not only, also regular people who can end up in a hospital if the food is cooked in unsanitary conditions, you don't wanna know how many diseases can you get from food cooked god knows where
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
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
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.
As a director of a major health department food safety program I compliment you on hitting on the challenges we are facing
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 ☺️
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
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 🤣
Me and my best friend went to go investigate a cookie place we’d never seen before and ended up in a parking lot at night with it nowhere in sight. We both quickly realized in that vacant lot that the dashmart next to us was the ghost kitchen.
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*
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
@@PatronSilverWave sometimes, it does depend on the place you are ordering from but it’s genuinely a despicable payment system that everyone in America has bought into. I tip workers but I firmly believe it shouldn’t be necessary or a vital aspect of pay. We have a lot of workers rights to fight for especially with ai coming.
I 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.
exactly!!!! as an adult, if I watched that mr beast video before I even knew what a ghost kitchen was, I would immediately be skeptical. but imagining I was a kid watching that, I'm certain that that would raise no red flags and i would think nothing of it. kids deserve better, this is so deceptive and gross.
Mr Beast is a "Night Media" "talent" he reads a script and they bot his numbers. Front man for walmart and the media industry to manipulate children.
It’s gotten so bad that I can’t order food through a phone number anymore. Whenever I do, they say “we only take orders from delivery apps”.
That why I don't use any delivery apps or any ride apps. There's already ways to do the things we've been doing for decades.
Since when is it the kids' fault they were born into a late stage capitalist dystopia? The whole point is to catch people unaware and they have disposable income and the only responsibility they know is buying crap -- that they don't know is crap.
26:15 feels like a fever dream watching cody ko and mr. beast together after everything that's come out 😭
It actually doesn't surprise me that Cody Ko and Mr. Beast know each other with the allegations against both Ava and Cody (allegedly). Same with the guy who's on the SO list and still works for Mr. Beast.
IKRRRR
Jimmy was in that discord too.
Just sayin he might not be "read only."
It's not even the same. Beast has years worth of evidence against him for being a lying dirt bag. Cody got accused by some trashy whore. Not even the same.
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
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 😅
@@maddy_7459 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
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?
In hindsight we can now see that mrbeast was definitely lying about his burgers
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
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
A “ghost kitchen” is surely one in which you prepare meals such as “ghoulash”.
Good one
Hehehe
And spicy dishes with ghost peppers.
Really good one
gabaghoul
I live in a smallish town, which is just large enough to have 3 (confirmed) different burger restaurants, outside of the usual big chains like McDonalds, yet if you go to Menulog or Uber Eats, and there's well over a dozen different burger venues, all of them with virtually the same menu, virtually the same photos, just slightly different burger names... What troubles me most is the dishonesty of it... You have a bad experience with one version of the same restaurant, what's stopping you ordering from another version of the same restaurant, if you don't order food regularly? It's almost bordering on false advertising...
I dont think Eddy realizes how influential AND re-watchable this video is. People come back STILL to watch this and people are getting likes from days ago.
Eddy, this is genuinely one of the best video essays I've ever seen. Amazing content.
Aye oh that’s me
right? i've literally been watching this video AT LEAST once a month since it was posted
@@mei8511 Seriously tho. Every few weeks or so it just...pops back up in my recommended. And I click on it every time. I never regret it even for a second.
Perfect video and the plots omg
dont even watch most of eddys content but this one I keep coming back
I actually just started working at IHOP a couple weeks ago and had never heard of ghost kitchens before. What's even more wild about these kitchens is that even as an employee I can't order the ghost kitchen food in person, I would have to pay Doordash for the delivery fees. Like, I see the food right there. Give me some waffle fries.
id be stealing like crazy
I had the same thing. I worked for a restaurant and they had 3 virtual kitchens within it. I couldn't order anything on it, but we would package the food there. Super Dilla is a good example of one of IHOP's virtual kitchens
Get this woman some waffle fries! D:
@@charliebabyversion exactly, what’s my virtual boss gonna do about it?
Man as a Uber driver you stole my video idea I’ve been thinking some people need to know chiquitos do like 5 different menus. Bao now kick as burritos. Franky and bennies do like 3 bone jam is one of them. It’s crazy man.
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
@@avangardismmyoure the type of person (or bot) that turns people against your religion by constantly shoving down our throats
Aged like fine wine 🍷
What happened?
@@katharineball585basically a TON of stuff came out about Mr. Beast's organization
@@katharineball585 A lot of delivery apps have cracked down on ghost kitchens since this video. Might be coincidence, but given the amount of views, I have no doubt they got a loooottt of inquiries about this issue.
@@katharineball585 a ton of awful shit has come out about mr beast, esp from ex-employees and people who were on his show Beast Games
@@katharineball585 mr beast got exposed for shady stuff
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.
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.
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
Venture Capital firms are GREAT at finding ways to F everything up. The concept of ghost kitchens, while clever in many ways, will only serve to destroy small businesses.
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
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
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??
23:32 how fitting you chose this video in particular
Incoming takedown notice from Jimmy
@@TheLolturtleHe can keep trying. But the internet doesn't work like that.
Take one down, five take it's place.
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
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
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.
Well we all know Mr Beats doesn't care about his audience. No surprise he's balls deep in a business like this
*Thanks for bringing this up. I worked at chilis in 2020, and I was forced to do THREE TIMES THE WORK for the same pay, because there were TWO ghost kitchens there. Was the worst time of my life. So glad I escaped that shithole.*
that sounds horrible, I'm happy you were able to escape that staff grinder.
Just out of curiosity, what would happen if you refused to cook for the ghost kitchens?
Well that explains why the Chili’s next to me is somehow always behind
You weren't forced to do shit.
@@sharp14x uh oh, someone’s late-stage capitalism is showing
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.
I love that in the beginning of the video Eddy lied to us, admitted he lied to us and then lied again and again and then later he told us he was lying to the focus group and I was STILL surprised when it turned out he lied to us again
If only actual journalists put as much in their investigations as you did for online food delivery. Hats off to you, sir.
Just looked at local food places on DoorDash out of curiosity now, and I’m happy to report that they have added a “virtual kitchen” tag to the UI!
I could've sworn I saw that tag before as well, but just looked at mine at restaurants I know are virtual brands and couldn't see it anywhere, seems inconsistent
Thank christ. Now we just need to get people to stop giving them any orders. Support local businesses otherwise massive corporations will take over.
@cfoscoop apparently it's not wide spread yet. Door dash not not marked all of them yet.
Is it going to stop you from eating there…no
Humans just want to create drama from everything thing. It won’t matter tbh it’s just food and you need it. So you order no matter where it comes from.
Ed literally mentions that in the end of the video
I work as an UberEats driver in Philly and there’s this one guy in one food truck/trailer cooking for 13 different restaurants by himself. It takes longer than usual to pick up an order from him because it’s just him making them & imagine how many people are ordering from one of the 13 restaurants all at one time in or around Philly. It’s crazy
I live in South Philly and I legitimately started looking up addresses for every place I want to order from that isn’t a small business, because I use UE primarily. It’s so frustrating
there's no way thats not a violation, the poor dude
Imagine if someone gave this guy enough startup capitol (5K?) to be his own thing. He wouldn't be working for minimum wage, could be making the same food, and be keeping the majority of the profit for himself. Perhaps Eddy Burback should get on that instead of spending thousands on focus groups? (Great video, Eddy. Not a criticism.)
Where at? I want to check him out
There is one of those carts near my house and the wait to pick up the food was horrible.
So cool to see investigative journalism still alive in some form.
It’s alive everywhere, just look at the articles Eddy quotes doing investigative work. It’s just not packaged in a comedic way for UA-cam.
@@andrevillaplana4429 Exposé articles don't get shared as much. Particularly if the issue isn't in the public eye.
And even better than some that is done professionally
@@andrevillaplana4429 the Boston Globe is one of the best outlets in the US, but people just ignore Media like it and pretend UA-camrs are saving us
Every newspaper does investigative journalism
Always fascinated by the amount of weird internet jank I avoid by buying everything directly from businesses' personal pages after looking up what's close to me on google maps.
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 🙄
There's a legitimate small restaurant near me called "Ghost Kitchen" that I avoided ordering from for a long time because I thought they were just being cheeky with the name. Then I drove by their site one day and saw they were an actual place that just chose a semi unfortunate name. Food ended up being amazing.
Yeah they gotta rebrand lmao
Maybe you should tell them? I'm sure if you thought that then probably lots of other people thought that as well. Maybe they could just change the name to "host kitchen" or "ghostly kitchen" or something
but do they serve ghost pepper or have a spooky season theme? or owned by a family named ghost?
Yeah they need to be told that ghost kitchen means something more than they thought
That's so unfortunate! They probably have no idea
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.
So it’s a virtual food court with a hint of false advertising that destroyed small businesses. Cool.
I used to be a DoorDash driver, I’ve had a dennys employee tell me that they couldn’t give the customer a drink because they only had denny’s cups instead of the ghost’s restaurant’s ones. It honestly seems like they don’t want the customer to know where it comes from. Also, I had probably twice as many orders from “it’s just wings” than I actually did from chili’s, even though they’re the same restaurant.
I was about to mention IJW. I fw them.
But not Chilis lol
That was so confusing the first time I got the order for a restaurant at the address of a restaurant, maybe chili's or similar. But they don't have any sign so I circled a few times before going in to see what's up and they said they only do this ghost company online. I guess to keep it secret from their normal customers. Really annoying as a delivery driver.
Chilis sells its just wing flavors in their restaurants now. Didn’t use to be that way but my wife worked there so they hooked me up lol.
Agree my experience as well!!
I work at Captain D's and that's exactly how it is. We run a ghost kitchen called Catfish Kitchen and it's just our catfish with the prices marked up and different packaging.
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.
Ghost Kitchens are such a silicon valley concept:
It's not something which is inherently malicious, and I can understand the appeal of the concept. The idea of making a small restaurant or catering service more accessible to the average entrepreneur sounds great. The idea of making restaurants more resilient against lockdowns sound s great.
Then, of course, you realize how in execution this leads to nothing more than franchises endlessly cloning themselves to evade bad reviews and health inspections.
This is a fantastic point. The nuance in this story is exactly as you stated. Accessibility is almost always a good thing UNLESS it allows entities to evade accountability. That's where I draw the line.
With Ghost kitchens it could be more possible to fulfill my dream. Serving people my food.
I love unregulated capitalism I love unregulated capitalism
@@ceering99 ITS MY FAVORITE THING EVER WOOOOOOOOOOO LETS GOOOOOOOOOO
not only to evade bad reviews and health inspections, it's also definitely more profitable to take up multiple spaces in food delivery apps than just one
Bro got 10M views, it's still the most viewed video on his channel a YEAR later, AND he got mentioned in the Wall Street Journal and many other newsletters, making headlines, and he still refuses to take credit. The goat. Simply the goat.
I quit my last kitchen job because of ghost kitchens. We already had a 50+ item menu, with all you can eat wings on Wednesdays. We ran delivery through our own website, our phones, SkipTheDishes, Ubereats, door dash and our hometown delivery app. On top of all that, our corporate thought it would be wonderful to unload us with FOUR more menus in ghost kitchens. A Mac and cheese one, a chicken thigh one, a poutine one, and a desert one, all on top of our already huge menu. It’s making people quit kitchen jobs left right and center.
It's nice to know your worth and stand up for your values!😊
That's a ridiculous amount of items and work pushed onto crew fuck that it's not worth it
that's why I love love love restaurants who put it bold print on their websites that they dont work with 3rd party delivery. huge plus
g o o d
people should not be working at these places
I mean, that's awful for you and I'm sorry it happened. But it should make people quit because these places shouldn't exist wth
A job is a job, money is money but if you like cooking and you're passionate about it don't work in a ghost kitchen .~.
I just wanna say I'm really glad you're covering this. As someone with a disease which results in me constantly checking nutrition facts and inspecting any food I eat, I completely understand why the health concerns of Ghost Kitchens are very important and I think this needs to be covered in every news outlet. The thought of an unsanitary monopoly running 80% of the food production in my 8 mile radius is unsettling and honestly needs to be condemned more.
I have food allergies and I can't use meal delivery at all any more. Even if it's a "real" restaurant that I can telephone and talk to about allergies, the staff are so overworked, understaffed, underpaid, and often the kitchens are too small for the number of requests that come in, cross contamination is just too easy for them, and too risky for me. Uber Eats has sent me to the hospital 4 times even after calling the restaurant and ordering from "allergy safe" restaurants.
Though it's even getting hard to cook from scratch at home because of things "processed on shared equipment", finding certified allergy free staple ingredients like rice and oats is really expensive.
wow. never really thought of people with food allergies and stuff. must suck to order onling. thers some stores that only have names of their foods and nothing else and even i think, "What the hell even is this?" crazy to think Eddie has spoken up about this and not the news/polital shows
As a health inspector, this reallyyyyy stresses me out. I can’t imagine the conditions, cross contamination, ownership, training, etc
Plus… I know there’s a lot of debate about tech being ethical for the economy and job production, especially since people are still wanting and enjoying eating out (even if it’s just a quick drive thru), but… this is concerning to me if this type of thing becomes more prevalent for the restaurant/fast food industry lol
@@maddymueller6860 I've seen so many people go from having savings drop back to waiting for paychecks cause the delivery apps have made normal accessible options unavailable so 17 dollar stress burgers.
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.
I like to call them Suckerbucks.
Ah, late stage capitalism, beautiful
@@robertalexander-bk5zjanother great reason is that Starbucks tastes like ass and, for the same price or cheaper, you can get a better coffee from a small business
@@themelnova That nine dollar black coffee does taste more like a ninety cent coffee.
the second you mentioned multiple restaurants ran in the same kitchen my first thought was the major health code violations probably in those kitchens
I don’t mind ‘this is a real small business with a specific concept but we don’t have an actual dining room to save costs’ (although in my experience a lot of food is… not as good when it’s delivered lol) but I absolutely DO mind relabeling food, and running dozens of fake restaurants out of one kitchen.
I generally order online from places I already know are good in person but now I guess that needs to be a rule, no ordering online if I haven’t seen it in person
There's one of those in my current town, a ghost kitchen set up for the local food truck concepts to do delivery and outdoor dining. I also used to frequent a ghost kitchen restaurant that was run by a retiree who made vegan soul food and she used the ghost kitchen because she could rent the space in a commercial kitchen.
Soul-less food
Eddy's content is so wild. One minute you're watching a goofy 90's commercial, then a Groundhog Day/ Twilight Zone - like tour through Rainforest Cafès and then you are knees deep in the wildest investigation of your life. Amazing.
In my experience working at Chilis, having a ghost restaurant put a lot of stress on the workers. Often customers would come into the Chilis I worked asking where they could find It's Just Wings, and they would get SO mad at me when I told them that they could only order It's Just Wings food through Doordash. They DEMANDED to know why they couldn't just order It's Just Wings food in person at Chilis, and I had no good answer for them beyond "that's just the way things are," because tbh it is kind of silly that they couldn't just order their food like normal.
Frankly Raven if I was asked about why they can't just order the wings here I would tell them bluntly the system is really fucking stupid I didn't make the rules i also think it's a really dumb policy and I'm sorry for inconvenience caused
@kurtpunchesthings2411 yeah that's more or less what my answer boiled down to, when customers get upset there's very little you can say to appease them anyway. Thankfully I don't work there anymore!
@@raveng8217 ah that's good because yea that def would be terrible having to explain the policy of wings every day
" Sir this is a Chili's"
My god that sounds horrible. Sometimes I'm actually super happy about living in my 3rd world burning corner, at least here even fast food is 80% of the time real, well, food.
BOY THIS AGED WELL
Like fine wine...you can order at a Ghost Kitchen.
Part of the issue I have with ghost kitchens, beyond everything talked about, is that if you actually order from one and the food is nasty, you now have 20 different restaurants clogging your search results that you know for a fact will suck
I hate hate hate looking at a menu on a delivery app and desperately trying to determine if the photo is an actual photo of the food or some fancy stock photo.
@@HeyLeFay hello my name is Jean Michel .
I've work as a chef for prestigious restaurants. My education very limited I work kitchens and restaurants since the age of 12.
Paid under the table until I was 16.
I drop out in grade 9.
But I've mastered cooking.
I work work for Michelin star restaurants
And 5 star restaurants.
I was making brilliant money bought a house and everything.
Covid hit and ghost restaurant became bigger.
So the restaurant I work at
Had not one or two or 3 but 4 ghosts kitchings for take out.
From Greek food to mexican to Japanese food.
I work 20 hours days cause of it.
Zero days off
I got depress hated cooking keeping up with the orders .
I'd get orders wrong cause we had so many options .
I started doing Cocaine to stay awake and function needed more and more and more .
I kept pushing over 800 orders nightly
I would yell at the other cooks
I became worst and worst .
I was fired
Got a regular cooking job but they also added ghost kitchens I had no education exp for cooking .
I was being paid less cause of my old job I got hook on coke lost my house my wife.
And my kid .
Now it's yes my own fault for falling into drugs to try and keep up with the work schedule but I was being paid 55$ hourly as a cook with no education.
Cooking was all I loved and because of ghosts kitchings I lost my passion.
I'm now clean from doing coke .
But at what cost
@@HeyLeFay If the images look *too* clean, it's a stock image. Even the cleanest real images look a little bit ''messy'' because, unlike stock photos, they have actual food to take pictures of and it needs to look enticing for the customers.
EXACTLY!!!!!
Gotta be honest, I’ve been ordering from Uber eats quite often since the new year, just about every order I’ve had is pretty bad in terms of quality. It’s really not with a $20 mark up fee, plus tip, plus convenience fee, plus tax, plus delivery fee- which is different from tip, plus marked up prices compared to when you go in-store
when I heard 44 restaurants in one kitchen I immediately questioned "that's 44 different menus and hundreds of items for one kitchen??" and the cross-referenced menu items makes so much sense ie the fish sandwiches and wings.
This seemingly over-abundance of new choices actually limits choice, just like with social media companies all doing the same thing now.
I picked up from a place the other day that had 70 restaurants operating out of one to go window. It was nuts.
When I first realized ghost kitchens on the delivery apps here in Brazil, it was because there were restaurants that were almost a copy paste of each other, different name and logo (both absurdly bland) and the dishes were named different, but the pictures and descriptions of dishes (the things that take a longer time to make) were identical between two, three or even four places, with only minor changes in their menus.
@@NonsenseOblige I noticed it here in Brazil when I saw some known restaurants in my hometown advertising locations they did not have an actual restaurant at. When I went by the place I noticed it was only for delivery and what it seemed like a massive kitchen. Didn’t fully realize what ghosts kitchens were but I understand now, those places were an example of that.
@@Lucaz99 Oh, there's one of those in a big avenue not too far from where I live in São Paulo. It's just this big corner place that always has DOZENS of motorcycle and bicycle delivery people in front of it just waiting.
theyre trying to artificially make a monopoly. its like if your town had 20 grocery stores with different names but they were all owned by the same company, they are really just 1 company. except its much easier to make 50 companies that only exists online than to buy 50 different plots in the same town. its the same as drop shipping on amazon. there are many products on amazon where if you search for it you get pages of results that are all the same product made in the same factory in china but sold by different companies, and there are so many results you literally cannot find that product made by anyone else because that 1 product is 99% of the search results
For health and safety sake, I do think the multi-restaurant kitchens should be required to apply for a unique certification each time a new brand is added. This would encourage them to also make a lot less redundant brands because it would be costly to do so.
What's funny is that I guarantee you none of Congress or Senate is even aware of this stuff, even though they should be rapidly coming up with some solution
@@david8393 If it's becoming a problem for the FDA, I find it unlikely that no one is aware of this.
It’s almost as if, having one restaurant with a single menu would be the most efficient way to do health and safety…. Hmmm….
@@MrMoon-hy6pn Doesn't matter when people can be bought out. People don't care as long as they're raking in cash.
@@david8393 These are mostly people who barely even know that "the Internet" is not the same as "the Google."
can we just talk about how great this video is? i find myself coming back to just watch it all over again and it still really captures me, thanks eddy!
As soon as you mentioned that it was multiple different "restaurants" in one kitchen my brain immediately went to allergy risks! I'm glad you touched on that part!
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.
@@theanxiouslegume9280 Nah it looked awful. The image quality for the burger was cheap like someone had ripped a stock low resolution image of a burger and slapped it together with a random quirky typeface. I'm embarrassed that he said he spent four days on it.
@@Dahpie I'm pretty sure he drew that burger himself. I think it's quite harsh to call it "embarrassing" that it took four days- he's new at this. Nobody is born with the skills to draw and design, so of course it took a lot of tweaking.
i worked at a mom and pop place that eventually stopped doing mobile orders because they’d always get cancelled. can’t blame the drivers; if they don’t receive a tip or the location can’t offset the price of gas, it’s literally not worth their time to pick it up. we ended up with a lot of unused/unpaid for food and had to remove our service from delivery apps.
they were in business from 1995 to 2023, and closed down two months ago.
yeah, this is the future. it sucks.
Holy shit. This realization sucks so bad.
ua-cam.com/video/XIQWz56eefU/v-deo.html
Lol. Get with the times. Capitalism for the win. If you're not cheating, you're not trying hard enough. They deserve their business to be closed
@@gaywalllbiter people are just stupid now. easily influenced. hogs craving slop.
Yeah huge mega stores taking out all the mom and pop shops.
23:33 Oh hey, it's the PDF file I've been hearing about !
I wonder why he would hide his face.
Dude I saw the same thing looool
I worked in a place that had a ghost kitchen operating out of it and it was very strange. We barely ever had an order come in for the ghost kitchen but whenever we did we basically just took other food we already usually prepared and slapped a different sticker on the box. It was a weird concept to me at the time but I had nooooo idea how deep the rabbit hole went holy fuck
ua-cam.com/video/XIQWz56eefU/v-deo.html
I worked at a place that did Mr. Beast burger, they have a specific menu so we had to buy specific ingredients to make it from a different supplier bc we didn’t serve anything like Mr. Beast burgers, but people used to come in all the time having traveled with younger kids usually thinking they could eat some Mr. Beast only for us to have to tell them that they needed to order it through an app and couldn’t eat it in the restaurant 😭
@Mattea Grace I get having to order it in the app, but not letting the kid sit and eat it in the restaurant is a little stern on the owner's part. Lol
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
the intentional deceit and obfuscation is what gets me. it's eerily similar to other techbro ventures like nfts and cryptocurrencies where it's intentionally hard for anyone to even figure out how they work
Especially concerning when it's involving the food people are putting in their bodies
Don't even get me started on NTFs. I can't see paying money to own something that's only digital yet available to view by anyone with just a Google search. Just doesn't make sense and to me a waste of money
~* if ur product isnt good, just get enough of ur bros to say that it is! *~
These kitchens are.owned by huge corporations making the ultra rich more rich, that's the difference sir
I am fairly confident in saying that they are at least on somewhat shaky legal grounds
Another information that reaffirms my choice not to order out.
The peace of knowing how my food was prepared and handled is worth the effort of cooking.
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 always had a weird feeling about ghost kitchens but I didn't even think about potential health code violations. Also the drama and production value of this video is insane. Now I want to see Eddy bust the ghost kitchens with an oceans 11 style crew
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 😂❤
If u can’t regulate it just shut it down already and punish major businesses if they are hosting previous offenders
lol nah I’d rather deal with less regulation
@@MrBarnettcm enjoy your ecoli and food poisoning
This reminds me of toddler parenting. You make them think they have a choice when you're asking them to do something. "Do you want to go to bed in the red pajamas or the yellow pajamas?" They're still doing what you want but are satisfied that they got to decide how to do said thing. In this case, the business WANTS you to buy from them, but want you to think that youre choosing where to eat.
also if you went to Jhons Kebab and Steak and they had a Cod Sandwich, Kebab, Steak, Burgers, Chicken, Waffles, Pancakes, Thai and what not on the menu, you would think thats a cheap place that just does everything but nothing good
This is such a good analogy. Operating 40+ “restaurants” giving the illusion of choice to the consumers. I found the whole premise very disconcerting but you’ve described exactly why. I’m sure it’s greatly impacted actual small businesses as well.
What choice do you want in this case?
For me it boils down to pizza vs burgers vs chinese vs ribs. I get delivery from places I tried and found good. Not because of the name on the front of the building.
If the burgers are bad, I won't order burgers from there any longer. If the ribs are better than the last best place, I'll order from them from now on (though I will still try new places).
The fact that the same company owns it is completely irrelevant to me.
nice analogy
Technology has ruined me. Cell phones are pretty much evil. Technology is exactly explained in this video. Certain humans that immoral thrive because it’s easier to rip you off. On the other side I’m sure it’s helped a lot of good.
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 :(
The health inspection thing freaks me out so much. As soon as I found out about ghost kitchens i started only ordering from places I know exist as physical stores. I usually only did that before but now I don’t wanna browse delivery apps for new places cause of the risk. So sorry to actual small businesses I’ve inadvertently screwed but I don’t wanna get salmonella or kill my husband by accidentally giving him peanuts
Ordering from a known, physical restaurant is still no guarantee. In the video he talks about an article stating that Buffalo Wild Wings had 100 fruit flies in the restaurant. So even if you had avoided ordering from their ghost kitchen "Wild Burger" and ordered BWW instead you'd still be getting food from a fruit fly kitchen. In an ideal world restaurants that score below a certain grade would be temporarily unable to sell on the delivery services until they bring their score back up with the Health Dept.
@@charcoalanderson8010 yeah it’s grim.y husband and I have to be really careful where we eat because of his allergies so we have a few places we trust.
Well, now we all know how to get rid of your husband. Pass the Planters.
@@charcoalanderson8010 Heres the problem. Say you have 10 "Shops" operating out the same kitchen and one of those orders a customer gets food poisoning and they close possibly due to failed Inspection, they can just close that one "Shop" but keeps operating the other 9 out of the same location since they did not "Fail" the inspection.
I didn't expect your comment to end like that lol
Well well well,
Yt algo finally works,
It brings me back into this master piece after recent drama.