The Deceptive World of Ghost Kitchens

Personally the most horrifying part of this is paying 17$ for a burger.

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.

Doordash now labels virtual kitchens after backlash from this video. Good on you for exposing!

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.

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!

Every time Eddy said “I lied” my eyebrows just kept getting higher and higher. Jaw on the floor. Absolutely flabbergasted.

I 1000% AGREE that food apps should LABEL the VIRTUAL RESTAURANTS!!!

In Canada this is illegal but they still do it. Under consumer protection law, deceptive advertising/ deception of the consumer before making a purchase is illegal in every sense.

Jacksfilms randomly running the focus group had me absolutely giggling, he is the unemployed friend

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

this majorly sounds like a tax avoidance thing, i'm betting each 'business' counts 1/40th of the revenue but 100% of the costs

$17 for a generic burger from a place that basically pays no bills, almost zero employees to pay for, zero everything. The amount of profit these generate is insane.

Jacksfilms just appearing out of nowhere only to host a focus group is incredible

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.

I’ve watched this video 100 times trying to find out how to do my senior econometric thesis on ghost kitchens. I have degrees in political science, economics and logistics and my family owns a small restaurant and this is the biggest ethical conundrum i have ever encountered in every single facet. Ghost kitchens are economies of scale but violate the theory of the informative prerequisite of voluntary exchange. There is no way to effectively tax these businesses in places that have employee based rates. You can’t impose legislation on a place that doesn’t exist. My family’s deli relies on a difference in experience and hospitality to provide living wages for workers and find locally sourced meat and produce as possible but when that difference is removed from the equation, we’re fucked. I think about this every day.

I refuse to buy from Ghost Kitchens. I don't order from delivery apps anymore because they're so rampant and because delivery app fees are ridiculous but when I DID order from them I would research any restaurant I didn't recognize. When it hit the point it was clear almost everything was fake I knew it wasn't worth it anymore.

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

the fact that eddy does not once comment on the fact that jacksfilms is running his completely legitimate focus group is so funny

Here in Norway every restaurant has to hang up the report from their last health inspection and keep it visible at all times. It also display the rating they got from the 3 previous inspections and their dates. Now that food delivery and ghost kitchens have taken off I guess it would only make sense that they put these 'reports' digitally inside the apps for each restaurant.

I worked as a hostess at Chilis, and I had many Uber Eats drivers come in and ask for a place called "It's just wings." I would be so confused, and so would the driver. I had one person say they were driving around for about 15 minutes looking for a wings place, only to be greeted by a location for a chili's. And for anyone wondering why Mangianos Italian food is coming out of a Chili's kitchen, it's because Binker, the company that owns Chili's, also owns Mangianos. I also worked in To-go in the chilis sometimes, so I had to pack the wings. The wings for Its Just Wings are exactly the same for the Nascar Fuel wings.