Ghost kitchens
publish Ghost kitchens, aka “virtual brands”, are when a regular restaurant has enough space to rent out parts of its kitchen during the day to a food delivery and fulfillment service, e.g. DoorDash and Uber Eats. They don’t advertise outside of their parent delivery apps and are remarkably close to brandless with names like “China Live Signatures” serving Chinese food, “The Burger Den” offering burgers and milkshakes, and “Mac & Vegan” selling exclusively vegan mac and cheese (not the most specific market niche I’ve stumbled upon in the SF bay area — that title goes to XYZ).
In my experience the quality of food from ghost kitchens is noticeably bad. I’m 3/3 on this; actually the third time I didn’t even realize the food was cooked in a ghost kitchen until I took a bite and felt so personally offended I needed to verify the restaurant existed (note to investors: “Persian Gyros” is not a profitable venture).
Anyways, I noticed tonight while working midnight hours that there were a lot of ghost kitchens on DoorDash pointing to the same location: 415 N Mary Ave in Sunnyvale. I decided to investigate and, huh, they’re all pretty mediocrely rated: ((Broken screenshot: Screenshot_20220316-234425.png )) TODO: Find this screenshot. It should be from around 2022-03-17
So maybe poor food quality is correlation without causation? Ghost kitchen food only tastes bad because it’s prepared in otherwise unpopular kitchens? This warrants further investigation.
- https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/Bay-Area-Oakland-CloudKitchens-ghost-Adeline-16401359.php
- https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/bay-area-san-jose-cloudkitchens-17909539.php
2023-05-31: Found this pic while scrolling lol
Could you be much more obvious. Also apparently Pearl’s is the actual storefront, yet Sam’s has more ratings
Update (2024-07-27): Had a really good experience with one unexpectedly. Should I update this article? I have google photos pics from that day.