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Welcome back to the show.
My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
They call be Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that makes this the stuff they don't want you to know. Folks, whether you are listening to this at the beginning of your day or the end of your day or night, you could probably identify with a situation common to everybody. You just got home, you did some big stuff, and you're starving, but the
last thing you want to do is cook. It's like a whole other job.
But Ben, what if I ordered something and had it delivered to me waited upon hand and foot, like we did during the pandemic? That could continue indefinitely.
Right, Yeah, So what would you do in this hypothetical situation? And you know, if you're like millions of people every year in the US alone, you order delivery. Until pretty recently, our options would be fairly limited in this regard but now, as we record, there is an entire industry built only around bringing your favorite restaurant to your door dot dot dot Ellipses for a price. The problem is some of these restaurants may not be what they seem. Behold, fellow
conspiracy realists, the rise of the ghost Kitchen. Here are the facts.
I just want to put it out there. I think there's a third option everybody, either cooking your own food, ordering out, or option number three cereal Cereal. I just remember that being an option quite a bit in college.
My girlfriend likes to dine on what she calls square snacks, which are like cheese slices in the little plastic cellophane, and like ritz which is round, or particularly saltines which are square. So that's also an option. But it's true, Ben Yea.
The internet calls it girl dinner.
Girl dinner comes in all shapes and sizes. That's like a meme that I haven't quite cracked. It's a meme, Ben,
you nailed it. This is a thing. And I mentioned the pandemic because I think you know, one of the pluses of the pandemic, if it can be referred to as that, is that we all kind of felt like we had this extended vacation, and after a little period of time where we weren't completely terrified of touching anything from the outside world, ordering in from Uber Eats or door Dash or Seamless or Postmates or any number of these services kind of became a thing that we relied on,
and dare I say some of us kind of probably figured it more we're into our lives post pandemic than we would have if that event had not taken place.
Yeah, I mean even before the pandemic, Checkers was right. Checkers, perhaps the most philosophical of fast food joints in the States, said you gotta eat. People have always had to do it. Access to food is still one of the guiding factors of all human civilization. People love food, and additionally, people love convenience even before the pandemic, so it's no surprise
these two primal drives would intersect. I actually, I was talking a little bit with our friends at Station sixteen, who have done some excellent social media videos with us. They love weird facts, and quite recently we learned that the modern roots of food delivery in the West started back in the late eighteen hundreds. A pair of Italian royals in eighteen eighty nine became the world's first pizza delivery customers. So shout out to King Umberto and Queen Margarita.
Can you guess what kind of pizza they had delivered?
Uh? Pepperoni?
Close Margarita, they got a Margarita pizza.
Yeah, and I swear I've seen a pizza chain, If not a chain, definitely a handful of one offs called Umberto's.
Yeah.
I don't know if it's a coincidence, you know, me and my reaching and grasping etymological straws, but it's certainly possible.
It's weird though, right because I I, for some reason, I was on the fence. I imagined the predecessor of food delivery would be much much older or much more recent. But turns out eighteen eighty nine and ever since then, food and food delivery has sort of mirrored these larger historical trends. Wars affect how food is delivered, They affect the way food is preserved. Right, and if it weren't
for Napoleon, we might not have King and food. The technological advances, shifting forms of labor rights, and so on, they all determine how and when people order stuff to eat at home. The most amazing thing happened just a year later, in eighteen ninety. Have you guys heard of Daba Walla or Daba Vala?
New to me?
Yeah? No, new to me too. It's really quickly Humberto's pizza chain and New York State and New York City like maybe like twelve or thirteen of them. But I wasn't just making that up. Tell us about the moment by Dabba Walla service. I know about the chai wallas, you know, which is a very popular, you know, dispensation kind of method of chai tea in train stations and that became very sort of a national sort of identity factor for India.
But tell me about the Daba Wallas. Yeah, Dabba Walla dates back to eighteen ninety. It's the very first massive meal delivery serve, the very first meal delivery system en mass and it occurs under British colonialism in India. Here's what happened. Tons and tons of people moved to Mumbai, which was then called Bombay. They would leave for work extremely early in the morning and they would work all day and into the night. They didn't have time to
dine out. And so with all these hungry people flooding the city, a guy named Mahadeo Havaji bachace partner pronunciation figured this out. He said, let me get a small army of dudes to deliver food. And these deliverymen became known as dabba wallas, which translates to the one who carries a box. And if you ever want to have an interesting lunchbox, check out Tiffins Tiffi in They're super cool. I keep trying to rationalize buying what But this service
is so successful delivering food that it booms. It feeds hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis and continues to do so during the rise of food delivery apps. This system, by the way, is so sophisticated and so accurate that management companies study it for guidance. Their error rate is something like one in x million.
Reminds me of the way the British cabbies have to study those crazy routes and maps and take that test called the knowledge.
Hmmm, well let's get back okay. So that's an amazing alteration into how food can get to you and your family. Right, that's a huge change. It's amazing, And then fast forward to just us growing up. When you guys were growing up, the only food that ever got delivered to my house were it was a pizza or from whatever chain, whatever pizza chain they would deliver and like a Chinese food
restaurant basically would come to me. I think, I think there may have been an Indian restaurant like that was a little bit further a wave, but like they wouldn't come to my house basically.
Just have a steak out, remember a steak out. Their whole thing was that they were at delivery, a steak delivery place. They would deliver burgers and steaks, and you know, kind of the kind of their whole gimmick was was the kind of stuff you typically have to go to a you know, sit down restaurant for. But that the fact that that could even be a business model kind of gimmick shows your point that there really were very
few options. And I always think of Chinese restaurant as kind of cornering the market on delivery for a very long time.
Because they would hire specific staff right at a restaurant to do their deliveries. That was it, that's what they worked for, that's how they got money tips through that single restaurant m H.
Like a pizza delivery workers as well. And this is also the age of the frozen food delivery truck, where there would be came the different names of them. These guys would drive through neighborhoods similar to ice cream vans, and they would deliver like a month's worth of frozen, you know, microwave meals. But you might be interested to find, Matt that we have a returning guest in tonight's story. The notorious consulting firm McKenzie. McKenzie agrees with you, Matt.
They say that just low less than two decades ago, if you want a delivery with notable exceptions like your example Steakeout Noll, most people in the US, if they were able to get delivery, they would get something from a Chinese restaurant or they would get pizza delivered. It became normalized, and now that is no longer the case. The food delivery industry has as of just like three years ago, it was worth more than one hundred and fifty billion dollars and that price is the result of
a triple digit growth since twenty seventeen. And then it was already doing gangbusters. Before the COVID nineteen pandemic hit, it was growing about eight percent a year, and then everything changed because you couldn't go places right, or you didn't want to go places you risk exposing yourself and your loved ones to a very dangerous pathogen. So now we're in the current situation where in the US alone, sixty percent of people order delivery or get some takeaway
at least once a week. And I don't know about you, guys, but in the interest of transparency, I'm probably among that number. I cook a lot, but not every single day of the week.
I think I love to cook as well, but I admittedly do delivery minimum two times a week, like complete transparency, no question about it.
Sometimes more well, well, I'll just be the minor outlayer.
I've pretty much stopped unless I don't have time to make food for my son after like for instance, after we're recording or something and there's not enough time between bedtime and me, you know, stopping recording with you guys, then I will maybe do a DoorDash or something, but.
I arrive like right when you're done.
It's it's as really helpful for that too, exactly.
I don't know if you guys ever seen me pull my phone up like as right, it's to an episode, but it's because it's I kind of have to do it or.
Else having for those lifestyle you know, the necessities. It's also a great crutch for lazy people. It's probably more my deal.
But yeah, but just to the point, Ben, I think it is so it can't be understated how much the fear of catching some potentially scary thing was and how much that pushed all of us, like globally humanity to move in this direction.
Yeah, and right now, the online delivery business is projected to reach one trillion dollars by twenty thirty. That's assuming another pandemic spike doesn't occur. If another global crisis like the pandemic spikes again, then that number is going to be much much higher. I think the way I put it was a pandemic spike, puts some real stink on those numbers. But that's perhaps a big Yeah.
It reminds me too of the way, like it's become really difficult to get people to fully commit to going back to the office because that whole trend just was so you know, hammered into us the whole work from home thing. People are kind of wont to give it up.
So it becomes this whole negotiation with employers where it's like, well, if you come into the office a couple of days a week, we'll give you free snacks or something, because you know, it's hard to turn back the clock when people make these big life changes.
Agreed and no. Obviously, for anybody who tuned into our previous episode, you know that McKenzie is a source with let's say an angle. They have a goal. The research is solid though. They point to the pandemic's effect on food service and they say, you know, check it out.
Restaurants that once upon a time would never serve takeout they found themselves relying on it to keep their business afloat, and companies like door Dash, grub Hub, Uber Eats, and so on, etc. At all they flourished during this time. Though to be absolutely fair, we cannot necessarily say the same about the drivers working for those companies.
Yeah, and this is you know, a pretty deep topic, you know, because obviously you see there's so much wrapped into it from very recent history. So this might be the first and sort of a mini series of episodes but for now, let's leave the history stuff there largely, and let's move on to this. If you live in a developed country and have a disposable income, let's call it. Although sometimes it's just you know this, you have to eat.
To your point about Checkers, Ben, it's just a matter of like what options do you have, how much are you going to spend? Can you afford to have this delivered right to your door? So if you do have the means to pay that extra fee, all sorts of restaurants are at your disposal to wait upon you hand and foot, everything from you know, fast food restaurants like Checkers to literal fine dieting. A lot of these really nice places are supplementing their income by you know, having
a delivery component. Some places totally we're like, no, we don't do that, that's not we don't have the personnel, and that we should get into that a little bit too late, and I'm sure you will. It's about how much personnel this takes and how much of a tax that can put on the people making the food. That's
obviously a big part of this episode. But you can call a restaurant directly, sure, and honestly, a lot of places would ask that you do do that because if you use a go between like an Uber eats or whatever, there are fees involved in the restaurants having to pay out some of their you know, their profits to these these third party services. So people typically don't really do
that they use these apps. But often if you search for a type of food, whatever you might want, it's there and then you just wait and frankly, depending on what neighborhood you live in, what part of the world you live in, it can come pretty absurdly quick.
But with all that being true, tonight's question it dives into something that might surprise a lot of us listening to law at home. Where do all these restaurants come from? When you search for a genre of cuisine, Like you say, I want some faw and there's a pa restaurant you've never heard of, but they can get it to you in thirty five minutes. Who are these people? What the
heck is a ghost kitchen? I suggest we pause for a word from our sponsors, maybe a quick snack break, and then continue to explore because God, it's such a cool name. Ghost kitchen. Yeah, here's where it gets crazy. We've talked about this one a little bit off air, and maybe I think we mentioned it in a stream news or listener mail segment. But a great way to get into this phenomenon is a Reddit thread from twenty
twenty in Philadelphia. Shout out to Reddit user Kendall Neff, who ordered what she thought was pizza from a local Philly restaurant called Pasqually's or Pascali's.
Yeah, this is the one you brought I think, Ben, you brought this up, or when you guys brought this up, and I was like, what is Pasqually's And you guys are like, oh, let me tell you.
But isn't it the idea where you're just you're in one of.
These apps and you you find a place that looks to be pretty nearby, you order what you think is a local pizza.
Well, and pasqually certainly has the ring of truth to it in terms of like, you know, local Philly type fair. I mean, I think one of the most popular Philly places is called Peaquads, and then there's also like a cheese steak type place with names like that. It has that sort of you know, oh this seems legit, right.
Yeah, it's Philly is face for having restaurants where it's some guy's name, right, So this pizza and wing joint passes that sniff test and our friend from Reddit. She gets her food delivered and she texts the driver afterwards after the delivery succeeds, and she says, quote, also, just curious. Was this food from Chuck E Cheese? The driver replies and says, there was. This was the Chucky Cheese store, but the windows had the Wing restaurant on them. I was curious too, go lmao.
Well, first of all, what tipped her off to ask the driver that question? I'm curious there, she was already suspicious before it even arrived.
Let me just say, I think we all know a Chuck E Cheese pizza when we've tasted a Chuck E Cheese pizza one time?
Yeah, tasted it again, school.
Lunch pizza jobs. Yeah exactly. I'm with you there, Matt, Because it turns out our pal Charles Entertainment has been using some burner identities. Pasqually is the name of the chef in the Chucky Cheese Extended Universe and the human he's a party animal. If you go pizza party animal, just so, and if you go to delivery websites across the US. You will see Pasqually's all over the place
because there are a lot of Chucky Cheeses still. Check out our ridiculous history series on the history of Charles entertainment. And they so people ask them about this. They asked Chuck E Cheese about this this.
Second no comment, get out of here with that.
Yeah, this kind of name switch ru is not, for the record illegal, and they said, They said the following they were talking to Business Insider and one of their reps said, best Wally's Pizza and Wings is a delivery only, premium pizza brand operating from Chuck E Cheese kitchens. So dba doing business as well.
We also know Chuck E Cheese has had some financial woes for a long time and it was just exacerbated by the pandemic. So this makes a lot of sense where they're like, holy crap, We've got this the golden opportunity to like kind of trick people, but do it in a way that's like not overtly bad until they get caught. I don't blame them exactly, but it's shady. Still, it's seen, don't you guys think kind of But yeah, defense too.
They've got a commercial kitchen in every one of their locations. They're probably not cooking that much pizza for the kids that are running around doing all the gaming and stuff.
Right on your Jesus, especially during a pandemic.
This feels like a move because I don't I can't imagine that you could capture a lot of the market share if you just said, hey, we're chuck e Cheese.
We delivered exactly. I mean you could. You could say it's a willful deception, and there's some validity to that, But on the other hand, it is a smart and totally legal business move. Let's face it, chuck does not have the most stellar rep amid pizza snobs and right, and you know, it's whether whether or not you agree with the idea of folks. We might be surprised to learn chuck Ee is not the only rat in the game here. Applebee's also delivers food under a sub brand
called Neighborhood Wings. Just Salad has another brand called Health Tribes. These are targeted, or at least Health Tribes is targeted at people with dietary restrictions. Doghouse has eight other virtual brands. Companies love this stuff because the look, all the food goes through the same health standards as any other restaurant. They are to your point, Matt, they're just aware of pre existing brand associations and the baggage that comes with that.
So if you're already ordering something expensive like Uber Eats is always going to be kind of expensive, then you might not want to say, I'll pay for chuck e cheese. You might want to say, if I'm splurging, let me get something quality, let me go past scalies.
Well, let's talk about that just with Applebee's because the Neighborhood Wings thing is a newer thing, and it before they tried to call it Cosmic Wings and really put it off as though it was a whole separate thing, and then they had to shudder that whole side of the business and move it over to basically this thing, the Neighborhood Wings or like if you go to the
website Cosmicwings dot com, I think that's what it is. Yeah, for during the pandemic, that was a whole separate business that Applebee's was running kind of without the Applebee's, but it was all from Applebee's.
But was it even like like spins on Applebee's dishes, do they because even so many Applebee's stuff, ask Paul Mission Control is one of his favorite restaurants. They're kind of signatory dishes, you know, like they like, you know, what is it now, I'm thinking of Chili's but like, for let's take chilies for example, like Southwestern egg rolls. You'd see that on a menu for another place and
be like, where have I heard of this before? Or were they like kind of masquerading the names of the dishes too, or maybe even just using the ingredients in different ways.
A little bit of all, a little bit of all those approaches, depending on the venue or the outfit. And you know, look, this is to be clear. This was not as some kind of crooked conspiracy to move like contaminated pizza or literal bad apples.
This was we have no proof of that.
We have no proof yet these pies.
And of course if that is the case, they'll never get in trouble because the franchise model is a hell of an argument in court. But these so we're showing you that this is a very common practice. As a matter of fact, there is a non zero chance that some of us listening this evening might have a new favorite restaurant from the pandemic, and guess what it might be the I hop up the street just gonna let you know, let's step out of Plato's grub hubcalf here and be honest with each other.
Well, it's so easy to get caught up in like brand stuff, you know where it's like this place is known for having the best eggs in town, and that hype can kind of infiltrate your mind and your perceptions. And they might just be lightly seasoned scrambled eggs, but because you got it from X place that's got a reputation, it tastes better. So, you know, Pasqually's, you're thinking that
it's like, oh, I've discovered this new neighborhood joint. You in your mind might have these positive associations with something that you've definitely eaten before. At a kid's birthday party.
We learned that you guys, remember we talked with Oh gosh, our friends at Savor talked with this one time about the perceptions of wine, right, and like just great analog for sure, just the price, the way the label looks, the environment in which you're enjoying it. Like so much of the psychology behind the way your brain interprets that flavor. I think it's it's so strong here when it comes to the branding that you see when you're scrolling through potential food options.
Yeah. Absolutely, because taste, enjoyment of something you taste is weirdly similar to experiences on hallucinogens. Seeing and setting and context play a huge role, even onto the color of the plate that your food is on, like a blue versus red plate, And this is weird. Also, the science behind samolier practices not as solid as we would all
like to think. But these in these cases, these are all established, often gigantic national brands, and they're wearing you know, they're wearing a fake mustache and some glasses to get into your house, but you know, to serve you good food. They just don't want you to know that's actually Charles underneath the glasses of the trench goat. But there's something else that happened and it's going to continue happening. Probably what if the restaurant you were ordering from isn't a
physical restaurant at all. This is the rise of the ghost kitchen. And like you said it before we went to the ad break, ghost kitchen is such a cool name. It should be the name of a band or an album, you know what I mean. I would listen to a mixtape. I would listen to DJ Collead's Ghost Kitchen.
It reminds me a lot of ghost guns, which is a similarly not untraceable. But I guess the idea here is that you don't know where it came from, and that's what a ghost gun is. It's like a gun where the providence of it is kind of difficult to determine.
The other name for these, which I think is great too. I'm sure you guys saw this as a dark kitchen.
Or delivery only kitchen, but dark kitchen and ghost kitchen are the two best.
And one part of this that makes a lot of sense too, is to use get the most bang for your buck. If you're a business owner and you like have a kitchen, a commercial kitchen, maybe people aren't coming in and sitting down as much anymore, so maybe you have a lot of space and a lot of commercial kitchen equipment and implements. It's a great way to maximize the use of all of that and stay afloat. Because we know the margins for restaurants are very narrow, and that stuff's very expensive.
Oh man, Just the the regulations you have to follow to have a functional commercial kitchen in any given state, because they do very by state here in the United States, at least. Like, it's not only is it money, it is effort. It is special. Like you need to have somebody who knows what they're doing.
Ramsey kitchen nightmares, you know, to see just how quickly these things can fall apart and crumble into the ground.
Yeah, and look, it's also tremendously expensive to open a traditional restaurant. It's crazy money, which is why a lot of times, very talented chefs team up with someone who's essentially the money person, right, and they make all kinds of sacrifices on the way just to fit that bottom line. That's also why menus change, depending again on broader sociological patterns. There's a method to the madness here. Each of these, we'll call them delivery kitchens. Now you know what, let's
call them ghost kitchens. Let's go with the cool name. Each of these they're typically going to be located in areas where a lot of people order food delivered. So your favorite large or mid size city in the US almost definitely has a series of ghost kitchens. Now it's never just one, and the kitchens themselves, they'll have like a big storefront. You can't roll up to one of these places that often looks like a warehouse and say hey, let me get you know, a number three, or let
me get a mean chicken palm. They'll say, go to the app, sir, and and order it to a different address. This is a virtual restaurant. It's a digital storefront, which means they save so much money not just on real estate, but on front of house, on overhead, on all those other things that will just nickel and dime a traditional food joint to death.
It's almost like a digital version of the kind of pop up c see a lot of times where a restaurant will will allow a budding chef to use their kitchen or to use their space for you know, an exclusive period of time or whatever tests exactly but like you know, you it's an event. But like with this, you can kind of get on, get your thing off
the ground really quickly and test the waters. And I know a lot of places that probably start like this and then ease their way into getting a brick and mortar space after they realize that the demand is there, which I think is really cool as opposed to spending all the money and then realizing, oh no, we've made a horrible decision. We can't sustain this.
Places like dot Obisco, places like I mean there are there are tons. This is very popular in Atlanta, New York, and Los Angeles in particular. I imagine many other cities as well.
Yeah, yeah, And often the route is this, right, one of these shared kitchens, then maybe a food truck in a lot of those markets, then.
A brick and mortar.
If that's success, you're basically going up a chain now of viability in getting your food out to people. And this ghost kitchen concept, again from the concept, feels like a great idea that would work for everybody.
Still still a significant amount of financial risk, but a far smaller amount of risk that would be associated with someone saying it's always been my dream to have a seafood counter and we're gonna make fish sandwiches and we're just gonna hope people like them for the ten years. It takes us to break even, right, That's true, It's true. I mean there there's another part here, which is of course this makes sense. You're in a sense or sense no pun left behind. You're in a prime area. Fraction
of the costs. You don't have to worry not just about the expenses involved with having people sit down in a restaurant, but you also will be able to contract out with these third parties, these facilities that just own that commercial kitchen space and they will do fulfillment and logistics services, so you can get this dream that a lot of people have quested for in hospitality and restaurant restaurant industries. You can just focus on cooking, dude, you don't.
You don't have to worry about the gripes and the rabble rousers. All you have to do is rent out space at the appropriate facility. In the beginning, people were just running out straight warehouses that had the right utility hookups. But now you're going to find a place that is like a furnished apartment. You can just move your concept in and they'll have everything you need to function at
the scale of a physical restaurant. Your work goes into launching the brand, and by the way, depending on the company, for an added fee, they're happy to help you with that too.
Oh yeah, are we talking about places like cloud Kitchen.
We are talking about places like cloud Kitchen, and.
This was new to me, or at the very least this particular company. But even the idea of ghost kitchens being more of a service, because I think initially it was sort of just a concept where a lot of pre existing places sort of got this, you know, bright idea. Perhaps simultaneously, I want to I want to learn more about the you know, the history of whose idea this actually was. But the idea of a company that's like this is what they specialize him that was sort of
like a interesting kind of development for me. I wasn't really aware of this angle.
What's the name of the guy that started this one, Travis kalan Nicky.
Yeah.
Also he was deep with Uber beforehand. He's a co founder of Uber.
So the one of the guys, one of the brains behind Uber is like, well, let's do uh, let's do something similar here in serrupt the restaurant industry.
As long as we hold to our number one priority. Not we're recognizing the rights of the drivers.
Yeah, you're paying taxes correctly, but we'll make the driver sorry, I mean kitchen.
I mean, well, so they're going to pay taxes. What are they poor people? Anyway? So Cloud Kitchens you can go to their website right now, let's talk a little bit about them. According to them, you can get your kitchen up and running in as little as one month ish, so as little as six weeks honestly, And they say, look, we also provide facility management. If you've never been in the restaurant industry, that might sound like a dry term,
but dudes do debts and doudoids listen. That means you can work and you don't have to clean grease traps at the end of the day, you don't have to wipe down friars, You skip all that messy jazz, just cook and then you go home.
You're not a chef if you're not cleaning that kitchen.
Oh and that's oh, that's part of the business model too, is the regimentedness of that and keeping your staff in line and keeping your your place spotless or whatever. But this to me sounds a whole lot like a kind of restaurant version of Airbnb, you know, or you get all the privileges of having the space at your disposal, but you don't have to do any of the work for a price, of course.
I mean yeah, speaking to prices, look at the math for cloud Kitchen. We're using cloud Kitchen as one example, but there are multiple entities out there. Cloud Kitchen tells you the budding chef or restaurant tour that for as little as thirty thousand dollars US, you can start your kitchen going in about six weeks and then if everything goes right in six months, you will break even and that creates a ten percent profit with one million dollars
in total sale. Of course, again these are ideal conditions. This is a lot like just to be honest, and this is not a ding on cloud Kitchen nor it's founder, But this is a lot like saying, hey, if you start running when you're little, you can get the gold medal at the Olympics too. You can potentially, but not everybody does.
In the end, all of your efforts and no matter what your ghost kitchen is, have to work to hit
those metrics right. Yes, like your marketing has to be spot on to where people using those apps it looks at yours and goes, oh, that is the most appealing insert food type here, and then you know enough people have to order amongst all of the Again, if you're in a place that is really big in these ghost kitchens, that means there's probably a lot of brick and mortar stores around too, and somehow you got to beat that competition.
Yeah.
I had one quick question though, Like you know, I made the Airbnb kind of connection, and I'm not sure if I'm missing here, but it's cloud kitchens that these are all facilities they own and operate, or are they connecting budding chefs with available space and potential other ghost kitchens that are run by other individuals, largely.
The former o Ando spaces they also. I mean, it just makes sense and it could be a really great opportunity for a buddying chef. Again, because restaurants are cutthroat business, razor thin margins, a lot of plagiarism occurring, any legal edge is an enormous mission critical advantage to everyone involved, including potentially you the customer.
Guys.
I'm you're right man, I'm thinking of these places called salon lofts in Atlanta. Have you ever heard of these?
Yeah? Is that where?
You?
Like? I see it a lot in cosmetology. You can rent out a space inside a larger space and you pay them rent exactly.
That's that's like to me, that's a one to one to that where you've got kitchens in a facility right where you rent your kitchen within their big thing.
Oh, there's a place in East Atlanta village here that's sort of called I forget what the official title is, but it's like Beauford Highway and EAV or something like that. And be Buford Highway is this area of Atlanta that's got a lot of amazing Asian restaurants and Latin restaurants
and all kinds of different cuisine. But this place it's got like five or six different rotating not rotating that sort of like are there until they move on, but it's in one giant space that clearly they're renting or their a little corner of it, almost like you w at a table at a flea market or like you know, artist's market or something you know, like.
A food hall there. Yeah. So I think the example there with the prefurnished apartment in a nice part of tow And that works really well. And these other examples, the Salon the Salon Collective also makes a lot of sense. This is just good business. In the case of these ghost kitchens, business is still boomy. Cloud Kitchens alone, per their website, has four separate facilities O and O's in the Atlanta area. Surprised by the way in the interest
of full transparency. Recently, Cloud Kitchen has had some pretty big problems as the like they exploded at the start of the pandemic. But now as of September of twenty twenty three, they've been laying off a lot of staff.
They've been shuttering warehouse locations because, just like ghost kitchens, a lot of businesses that sprang up in the environment of the pandemic are now struggling to function with more and more people, you know, going back to work, hopping back in their cars, going out and frolicking.
Yeah, well, it's crazy to think.
They had a valuation of fifteen billion dollars in twenty twenty one. Because we again that pandemic state of mind and reality that we were in, they were like, Oh, this is the new thing, this is the future. It will always be like this and it will only.
Grow from here. And it's just changed a lot.
And the next question is who is using ghost kitchens? Are they? Are they as I had hoped when we started researching this, Are they kitchens populated by ghosts. We'll tell you afterword from our sponsor, and we've returned. As far as we know, all the staff of ghost kitchens are in fact human beings, which means they're haunted houses with a ghost inside them.
So sort of you mean the human being is the is the haunted house?
Yes, yeah, every human beings a haunted house, is the argument. But the thing is, like, if you think about who uses ghost kitchens, if you like, we had a nice sample size of three here, I think without checking with our palle michig control, we've got some folks who are ordering out once a week, maybe twice a week. We've got some folks who pretty much avoid it unless time
runs against us. But if you're a person who, for one reason or another uses an online service like this, unless you know for sure the restaurant you're ordering from, you quite possibly have given business to a ghost kitchen. There's nothing wrong with it. You're one of the people. U see them.
And so the ghost kitchens, as we've sort of you mentioned already, their biggest customers are going to be these aspiring chefs and folks that are trying to break into the restaurant business. People that have a vision. Perhaps they've got some sort of brand they're establishing that's hugely important. Just like you mentioned with the savor of conversation, Matt
about the wine labels and all of that. I mean, this stuff is huge and it can really have an effect on the way that your taste buds perceive the stuff. But what are some other examples of folks that would benefit from this kind of model, Guys, I distinctly remember sitting with the two of you and our favorite, our favorite restaurant, Dave and Busters, and we were looking online.
We were talking about something called mister Beastberger, and we were looking at their website and we noticed that, all of a sudden, we had just heard about this thing. They had fifty sixty locations listed, like as though they were brick and mortar places. And this was before we knew much about ghost kitchens. This is a relatively new phenomenon. It wasn't like top of mind, and we were like,
what the hell is going on here? I know this mister beasts guy's got a lot of money, YouTube money, but this seems out of the realm of possibility for anyone, even with like superpowers.
Yeah, one of the big third bucket of ghost kitchen customers is going to be we see not. Thanks for the edit here, Paul. Celebrities celebrities love a ghost kitchen, and you're right well, I appreciate bringing up Dave and Busters in any context. By the way, mister Beast back in twenty twenty one, street named Jimmy Donaldson. He announced that he opened three hundred restaurants across America, caveating we only serve people through delivery apps. And I remember checking
this out with you guys. Because mister Beast, the Mister Beast Burger, it mainstreamed public awareness of ghost kitchens. For anybody who is not familiar with mister Beast, the guy and his team are famous throughout YouTube and therefore the world for conducting these amazing, I don't know, stunts, right, sometimes pranks like staging a fake bank robbery that ends up with giving someone a really nice gift at the end, wholesome stuff usually, and New York Times writes about it.
This mainstreams ghost kitchens, and they say they put the relationship this way. They say, in exchange for a cut of sales the brand in the case, mister Beast supplies the name, the logo, the menu, the recipes, and the pr images for any restaurant owner with the space and the staff just make some burgers on the side. So it so mister Beast Burger became a little bit like
an anonymous collective of food. You know, it's a it's a Wendy's one day, Wendy's franchise one day, and then later they're also processing mister beast Burger orders well.
And to the point I think we mentioned earlier in the episode of the kind of scenario with the person getting the chuck e cheese delivery and the driver being like, well they had this window. I was watching some YouTube kind of expos's or a little news pieces about this stuff, and a lot of these places have like ten different little sticker things outside of their windows. I get maybe that's the law. I don't know, maybe it's just a style thing. But it's an odd look in them, and I think it's.
Just to let the delivery drivers know, oh, you are in the right place.
This confusing, but ye, you're here.
It's a hell of a lot cheaper than a sign having it printed and installed.
Look, I like it. I'm all about that stuff. And you know, Regardless of how you may feel about places like grub hub and door dash and uber, the the problems with those places are the systems right in which they operate. The problem is just like when you call a big company on the phone, the person who is delivering the food is not should not be the subject of your ire right because they're not the ones making those decisions.
Yeah, I will say this is very hard for me to stomach. Huhuh in some ways because I'm imagining. I'm okay, Let's just use an example. A you guys know a whopper. Everybody knows a burger King whopper, right. A burger King whopper is only that because it is the same ingredients at every burger King, right, and prepared with the same instructions that are at every king.
Flame broiled though Matt flame broiled.
But what I mean is for these ghost kitchens, it's essentially the same thing, right, The same ingredients are being delivered to in a Mister Beast's example. Here, it's like to various restaurant kitchens right that are operating, and more.
Importantly, the packaging it's all from mister Beast Burger. You know what I mean? Like, you get these boxes that we ordered my kid just as a goof which is a mister Beasts fan. We ordered it once and it was fine, But the novelty of it was that we were ordering fast food delivery from this YouTube star's fake restaurant.
Yes, but I guess just my point is it with mister Beast. It's like various different fast not fast food chains. It's like good kitchens, right, sure, like bo isn't it mid veil Utah?
Yeah?
But like example, but it's standardized and if they do it right and the kitchens are clean and people know what they're doing, the food should be identical, is what you're saying. Right, it should be.
But just imagine the chefs working at a Buca di Beppo were making it or is it a separate one or two staff members that mister Beaste is hiring.
I have this question as well. Beast is not hiring them.
It's a restaurant agreement. But I see, I see your point because it leads us to interrogate the concept of consistency, right, and that depends upon the restaurants getting very very specific, step by step instructions. It's also it's also hilarious to me to think that you could go into that Buca di Beppo and you know they're cooking the burgers, but you can't order them, not at the place, So the division seems sort of artificial. There's also another thing we see,
like the importance of branding and public perception. McDonald's has been making a killing with celebrity sponsored meals. It's still a big Mac or it's still you know, big macmeal, but now it's got BTS packaging slapped on it. The famous K pop band, right or Rick and Morty, Sejuan Sauce and people. Scott used their mind over this stuff. Yeah, and that's what that's what the company that partnered with Mister Beast sought to do. Their name is Virtual Dining
Concepts v DC. And they said, Okay, this Mister Beast thing is really good for us. Let's partner with Mario Lopez, let's from Saved by the Bell, and let's partner with a guy named Polly D. People in the conference room said, who the heck is Polly D? And from there he's from the shore and they said, what's the shore? It was like the Jersey Shore And who knows if they know that's a reality show or if they thought this guy was just big news. On the boardwalk of the Garden State.
They were talking about Paul Dean just styling on it right right in a different life DBA, Paul Michigan Control dec DBA is poly duh.
It all worked out, as Kurt Vonna get once said, everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. Kidding, Matt, your point was astute. Mister Beast had a problem with the quality. Mister Beast sued VDC eventually to stop production of mister Beastburger's entirely. They said, this virtual dining concept thing, they're more focused on expanding their business so they can pitch to other celebrities. That's what they want to be their primary model, and they're not paying attention to the quality
of the food. They're just getting the bag and then ditch and town.
Well yeah, but did you hear VDC's response to mister Beast's attorneys. Yeah, yeah, they were essentially like, actually, we didn't want to continue on with the contract with mister Beast, and that's why he's upset and that's why he's suing, so we're countersaving.
So the truth though, because I heard mister I heard kind of both of those, but it sounded to me basically right to your point. Maybe mister Beast was just doing a spin on it, But do you guys have a sense of which which which version is true?
Living courts decide it might be it might be something for the courts.
The winners in this case are going to be the legal teams because both sides here have some financial theft, so we we don't know how that will work out. A breached contract argument is nothing new in the business world. But we know this is not all pipe dreams and angel farts. We've seen some companies over expanding. We've seen bad blood happen between so called creatives and ghost kitchen initiatives.
But one thing's for sure. Ghost kitchens are reality. I don't love the phrase, but they might be the new normal. They've fundamentally transformed the course of the restaurant industry. I did not know this, but he knows a legend in the ghost kitchen game. I hop, you, guys. I hop is gargantuan in the world of ghost kitchens.
That makes so much sense.
They can make anything at an eye off us little deep. Yeah, they make crapes, for God's sake. Crapes.
This is just a tangent here because we're a little looser at the end of the year. But did I tell you guys about Denny's in Japan, Like you guys know Denny's.
Do they have moons over Mihami or is it called something different?
It is crazy? Okay. First off, it's one of the only places that has free refills, which is very much an American thing, So that alone is a huge sale.
Also nice apparently as a bit of an American thing.
Also, it's a huge Uh, it's a huge step up. It's a much nicer restaurant and it's weirdly Italian by the way, Denny's in japad at least. Yeah, and it's like, uh, it's a it's a night out on the town kind of place you go to. The similar to how PBR perhaps Blue Ribbon is considered a fancy beer in parts of China, and it comes in a whole different like it comes in like a wine bottle. It's quite expensive and a lot of the beers.
Come and kind of wine bottles over in Japan and China. I've noticed that we've seen it in films anyway.
Yeah, and and look We're not going to disparage the good folks at Denny's nor PBR because it did. It is an award winning beer. I guess technically right, they named it after the Blue.
Ribbon one at that one time, at the very least, you know. For a couple of last thoughts on my end, I was just wondering, do you guys think that we've already reached kind of peak ghost kitchen? And now the term is sort of a nag. No, you don't think so, because to me, in culinary circles, if if you find out something's coming from a ghost kitchen, then that sort of I think it sort of carries with it a bit of a blotch on the reputation of the food
because of all the things we're talking about. But maybe I'm misperceiving.
I mean, it's it's perspective, right, Just like for one, I don't know if this is helpful, but in the early days of baseball, it was considered cheating to use a glove to catch the ball, and now that's normal. I think what we're seeing is a process of normalization.
I think it depends on the situation too, right, If it's one of those up and coming folks that we're talking about. That's one thing. But if it's Chuck E Cheese trying to trick you into buying their crappy pizza, that's another thing.
I'm no economist, but I do think we're in a retraction from something that was catching on because it was
so economically viable. Now it's customers going through a process of getting used to it, right, and once we're used to it enough, I think this is just what it's going to be, because you know, if we look at what we studied on this show about real estate and commercial real estate, right, and like how expensive that is, and how running a brick and mortar in the long run, at this point it's probably going to become less and less of a viable thing. It's already really difficult. It's
going to get harder and harder and harder. But then having one big, massive kitchen where you know, hundreds, if not thousands of delivery drivers show up to every day, that's like somewhere central, centrally located in a city.
Like, how is that not going to be a thing?
You guys?
Right?
I would argue that what we're seeing as well is a democratization of restaurants through technology, of ownership through technology. For someone starting out, this process is way less intimidating they having to buy out a piece of real estate, make friends with someone for millions of dollars, and then just hope you guys get along for the foreseeable future.
But it's also dependent insidiously, inseparably so on the concept of third party delivery apps, and each of those has a troubled history when it comes to workers' rights, fair practices with partner restaurants, and customer satisfaction. I mean, I think this is something that we dive into with your help, Conspiracy Realist, and future episodes do have one last note
for everybody wondering. You heard about the world's first pizza delivery, and you, like us, probably thought, well, did Kingbirdo tip on the world's first pizza delivery? That and many other aspects of this story remain the stuff they don't want you to know. I can't wait to hear what you think, folks.
Matt nol I'm I am going to guess that a couple of people listening to the show this evening might be driving for door Dash or grub Hub or Uber Eats as they listen tonight, so it'd be amazing to hear some firsthand experiences with.
This one hundred percent. You can send us those firsthand experiences in all kinds of ways. First, you can send it to us online via social media where we are Conspiracy Stuff on x, Facebook and YouTube. Also be looking for some really fun YouTube content coming in the very near future. You can also find YouTube shorts that were already putting out there and on Instagram and TikTok. Find our videos at conspira Stuff show.
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