When someone pitched the idea of cloud kitchens to me a few years ago, the idea was you would have a centralized facility running multiple kitchens each of which was a single restaurant entity. It made sense as a way to run takeout only operations.
It seems like what’s happening now is similar to what happens in Amazon which is the generation of multiple throwaway brands in a bid to flood the marketplace and also farm positive ratings
It needs a term. Something in the neighborhoods of spam and fraud. Spam, because it’s voluminous garbage. Fraud, because it’s an attempt to convince the end buyer that something exists which doesn’t (a distinct product/brand/business).
There's also just a branding/targeting phenomenon going on to some extent. Ghost/cloud kitchens even from high-quality sources often have youth-oriented "cool" branding, websites, names of dishes and so on. They're definitely trying to target a different group of customers, at least in some cases.
The other aspect I've noticed is that most of these things are laser-targeted in terms of what they offer. Though they operate out of a full-service restaurant they'll offer just burgers, or just wings, etc. I think this one has to do with the way that the delivery apps deaccentuate the actual identities of restaurants: they really encourage you to just search/browse for a type of food, so this is sort of a gaming of that system.
This is a huge part of it. People have an idea of what they want and search for that, so a restaurant that appears to specialize in that will get top ranking.
What are you talking about? How did you get all of that from 'Maybe I'm just pampered'. I think he means, I wouldn't order from a restaurant I have never heard from or been to in person.
I don't know anyone, at all, who does what you are suggesting in this comment.
If by "pampered" you mean you don't want to be scammed by some popup kitchen that can easily rename/rebrand itself once it amasses a bunch of negative reviews... then yes, you're "pampered".
Always better to go to a place that has its reputation on the line.
I mean i have been ordering for years from places i have never been and largely had positive experiences. But sure you can skip the convenience and save yourself the 2% of bad experience
To be fair there’s only like ten restaurants near me and not even half are available on the delivery apps, so I’ve been to all of them (even mcdoogles).
At least in my area of the Midwest US, delivery before 2020 was strictly for pizza, and the delivery-apps were generally distrusted and harrumphed at. Even Chinese-food-at-your-door was still regarded as an extravagant Larry David plot device. But after 2020, it opened up and burst out of control, and now nobody seems to know or care where they're ordering from, because it almost always just shows up. I walk into restaurants, and they often don't seem to know what to do; they have a growing counterful of takeout orders waiting for the drivers, and two people scrambling around to seat people.
Redmond Washington, home if Microsoft, until Uber eats came along you had only a tiny handful of choices for delivery.
Around 2015 or so I was in charge of driving to pick up dinner for my team when we worked late. It was either that or Pizza.
Do restaurants even have their own delivery drivers any more? I actually ordered from a place recently that didz but it was the first time I'd seen that, again outside of pizza, since Chinese delivery as a child in the 1990s!
I’ve noticed that I think SkipTheDishes, or maybe DoorDash here in Vancouver has some restaurants that are marked as doing delivery themselves. I guess they get a higher cut if they do?
I find it pretty hard to trust the ratings in Uber Eats etc. I invariably find that Uber Eats has a high rating when Yelp or Google Maps has a significantly lower rating. Sure the food is only one part of in the restaurant experience but when it’s something like 4.5 v 3 it feels off…
The food delivery scene is culturally different in india. It’s faster and more efficient (not talking about driver exploitation though). Many of the cloud kitchens OP mentioned in the beginning are quite famous now and were places that never existed before these apps. So it gives confidence that you actually can trust new names in apps in india.
For the most part if you’re discerning with ratings numbers when you choose you should be good.
My suspicion on the business model with this scammer is that they go order from other restaurants after getting and order and get it for delivery. The prices in the delivery apps are generally marked up by up to 50% by the restaurants so you can do a good margin by being a shitty middle man.
I ran an Uber Eats-only toasted sandwich business with my brothers for a month as an experiment - we rented a small room with no shopfront, and while we were popular, realised it was difficult to grow revenue when your only source of orders was via the gatekeeper apps (Uber Eats, etc) that take a high margin, and your at the mercy of their positioning of your shop amongst others.
This makes me think anyone running a cloud kitchen is going to always be under the thumb of the apps/landlord with no way to expand revenue.
I heard some stories of a food enterprise with a bad reputation in Hong Kong does something similar, open a few takeaway only shops under different names. I guess they having a catering supply chain would help the operation a lot
Yeah, while I don't work in the food industry. As an app developer, I know what it's like to be at the mercy of ASO (for the App Store) and it's not fun.
Perhaps it makes financial sense for an existing (non-ghost) restaurants. They can expand their revenue, keep their kitchen busy, etc. So anyone from your local mom n' pop burger place to big chains (IHOP, Applebee's, etc) can run several ghost kitchen brands to increase kitchen utilization.
It seems like a popular strategy is to open multiple "resteraunts" out of the same kitchen. Maybe that makes the algorithm positioning issues more stable in aggregate or something.
It helps even if just because you’re unlikely to order a burger from a pizza or Chinese place, even though their kitchens are perfectly capable of making one.
Was this in America? Can you just do that, open a delivery restaurant on a whim? I'd imagine there would be all sorts of inspections and permits that would need to be acquired first before being able to sell one toasty sandwich.
Great question, this was in Australia, we were able to obtain a temporary food license, one of my brothers is a professional chef, and we both hold the necessary food safety accreditations and had an inspection done by the council to approve the space for food preparation.
In US, it varies but is is typically required. But it’s pretty easy/quick though. Food safety training might have a testing requirement but its a couple days of reading/studying for most. Especially if you just rent space in a already permitted commercial kitchen, that’s usually the biggest hurdle.
Even if you skip it, it’s pretty low risk in short term, just dont make anyone sick/complain!
But there are also commercial kitchen spaces you can rent. They've taken care of the inspections and permits for the food preparation facilities. You pay an hourly rate to use the facilities. Then all you have to do is make sure that your employees have their food handler's permits (a simple matter) and you're good to go.
I so want to hear more about this. Mad props to you and your brothers. What a great way to approach life. Do you have an in-depth blog post or podcast or something where we can learn more?
No blog post, but collected some good photos of our setup, perhaps I should write my second blog post (my first was about the acquisition of my podcasting tech start-up, https://andrewda.com/blog/omny-studio-acquired for those who like stories with photos).
As per the EDIT yes one of my two brothers is a professional chef, I also completed a short course to be accredited as a food safety officer/supervisor (a requirement to run even a short term food business), spoke with Uber Eats about the onboarding process, discussed our brand/food options together, found a location in a pocket we thought would do well for that cuisine etc.
If this is of interest perhaps I can put a few little things together.
That guy is brilliant. If I ever have a restaurant to push on Tripadvisor or elsewhere, I know who to call. And the food pictures are just great, now imagine ehat he can do with an actually decebt restaurant!
Why can’t you build an app and pamphlet your local area? Make it
cheaper on your app, or more choices?
Uber hasn’t monoplized marketing.
My online ordering habits are wedded to the restaurant not the middleman.
(Unlike taxi trips where I am loyal to Uber not the driver).
If a restaurant gives you a shit or good meal it is a good prediction model for your experience the next time. You can’t
actually commoditize Pizza as much as you would intuitively imagine.
A blind Pizza from Uber? No thanks. Pizza from XYZ Pizza who I trust via the Uber conduit. Yes please! Via the XYZ Pizza app and save $5. Hell yes!
I'm confused why you have such completely different mindsets when it comes to taxis vs food. In both cases, the quality of the experience depends fully on the person you pick, your only indicator of quality are user reviews and Uber's only regulation is demoting people that get bad reviews or suspending them if they get reported.
So why would you trust any random person that makes an Uber driver account to drive you around, but not do the same for restaurants?
Repeat business with a driver is really hard. And at least the uber app has strong remediation and selection of drivers.
Restaurants do allow for repeat business, and apps have less remediation and less selection. Less selection is because a bad restaurant causes much less PR damage than a bad driver.
The experience of being taken on wheels from A to B is very easy to make the same. Especially when Uber requires modern cars (reliable) and drivers are chasing 5 star ratings. Everyone is friendly, offers a mint, talks if you want or stays silent if you want, drives safely and finds the destination. It is just a tighter set of requirements and judgements than with food which
is way more subjective.
Uber-style ratings are awful for restaurants.
Uber Taxi is basically: you did your job, you get a 5. Any aggregate rating below 4.5 could just be a 0.
Uber Eats... you did your job, I got the right order, and it was delivered. Well that's just expected, you won't get any brownie points for that. What I review is the food. I have used Uber Eats probably a thousand times. I have never given anyone a 5 for their food. I want to use the whole scale. And I'm fine with occasionally eating something that I might score a 3 (using my own scale) if I'm in a hurry. But on Uber Eats (and all the other apps), absolute slop has a 4.7 rating in their app. I don't understand other people. They must be giving a 5 for something that is merely "fine" (I'm being generous here)? I'm sure there is rating manipulation going on, but it can't be that rampant. Apart from times when the order was wrong or something was missing, I stopped rating Uber Eats orders a long time ago, because that rating scale does not map well to mine.
Also, several times I have received a note in the bag saying "I hope the food is to your satisfaction and that you will give us 5 stars!". Big mistake.
Surely for an individual restaurant a website is a better fit? I’m less likely to download an app to order food from one specific place, but I may well do it via a website…
It's all about discovery.
You like XYZ pizza; how many places did you try before finding them? How did you find XYZ pizza?
Thats where these gatekeepers thrive.
> at the mercy of their positioning of your shop amongst others.
Maybe this is why the owner of these restaurants has so many brands. Back when phone books were a thing, you'd see businesses named "AAA Bail Bonds" or "AAA Plumbing" [0] so they would sort first in their classification. Looking at the restaurant names they used, it appears that they want at least one of their brands to appear in every cuisine category - so no matter if you're searching for Biryani, Chinese, Curry, or Kebabs, they'll have a presence on Swiggy & Zomato.
A restaurant that specializes in every possible kind of cuisine isn't likely to be good at any of them, and it appears their ratings bear that out. :)
[0] A plot point in the The Accountant movie with Ben Affleck was that he had named his business "ZZZ Accounting" so that he wouldn't get many walk-in customers.
Wasn't Zyxel named Zyxel so that it wouldn't have to compete with "AAA tech" and "1 Tech" for the first page of any catalogue, but would always be found first by people wary of name squatters that would read catalogues backwards?
This is peak RAAS. It's just like all the generic brands on Amazon/Alibaba same company but diversify branding to camouflage yourself among the forest.
For it to truly get to the Amazon level, you'll need to start seeing ghost restaurants with gibberish five- or six-letter all-caps names all reselling identical food from Sodexo and Aramark.
I was baffled by those Q&As on Amazon, particularly the ones that just said something like “Sorry, I haven’t used that feature” until I received an email from Amazon saying something like “Someone has asked this question about a product you bought, can you answer?”
I did what I assume the product managers expected to happen and just ignored it because I didn’t know, but presumably some significant proportion of people will throw some nonsense answer in, and no one at Amazon then checks the question was answered.
Yep. The old wacky tobaccy will make you do that kind of thing. Back in the ‘80s I managed to go through an entire bulk warehouse sized box of Cheezits in an evening… dipping each crispy cheesy square in a quart sized jar of butterscotch Carmel sauce.
This happened to us with late night mac and cheese. There's a pretty awesome local mac and cheese restaurant called Home Room in Oakland and UberEats showed one near us on the Peninsula. It was TERRIBLE. Microwaved mac and cheese sludge still frozen in the center. Nowhere in the ballpark as tasty as the one from the actual restaurant. Turns out a ghost kitchen opened 5 pseudo-locations all over the Bay Area but instead of the actual food from the restaurant it was SYSCO microwaved food.
It was actually shocking to me how and why the original restaurant was willing to dilute their brand name with that sludge. Meanwhile that ghost kitchen location 6899 Mission Street in Daly City churns out a bunch of other brand name restaurant food that aren't actually located there.
Park Mediterranean, a Humphry Slocombe, a Subway and also Dosa all at the same address. And the "Local Food Hall" has locations with other restuarants cobbled together in Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Milbrae and San Jose.
I ordered a David Chang burger from (what I didn't know was) a ghost kitchen. It took me 5 minutes wandering around an abandoned parking lot to realize the filthy trailer with no signage was where I was supposed to pick up my food. The trailer smelled like old fryer oil, and the guys working inside seemed... generally unaware...
Agreed. I thought the article was really interesting. I don’t know much about how the author got their data, it seems like it’s a Kaggle dataset and I’m not familiar with how that was procured, but the analysis was really fascinating to me. So was the tweet by the person who asked Zomato about the repeated separate instances using the same FSSAI license, which I looked up and here is the link: https://mobile.twitter.com/ManjoBun/status/15331133101066608... : definitely no public follow up by Zomato.
The line chart was great as well showing the huge number of listings for that one kitchen.
I don’t live in India and I wondered what FSSAI is, so I looked that up as well. It’s the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India: https://www.fssai.gov.in/
The author is performing a public service that I feel ought to be done by the authority in question in the first place. I hope the article gets lots of traction and serves as an example for food safety authorities worldwide to prevent this kind of trickery.
I’m leaning towards subscribing to the author’s newsletter; at the end of the article they mention that they were the ones who posted that recent fake IMDB credit article which I also saw on HN, and I’m looking forward to reading the article on the early Indian internet (https://peabee.substack.com/p/15-mafatlal-and-the-early-indi...). (I once had a chance to see Vint Cerf give a talk and while it was a while ago I remember enjoying it.)
Last note: I thought it was kind of funny how the author resorted to using Google maps photos of the kitchens. I thought it would be worth an excursion outside to get more recent photos and see them first hand, but maybe the author has mobility issues or something. I feel it would add a personal touch though.
We have something similar here in the US. For certain types of services, every listing you find online (it used to be in the phone book in the olden days), is really the same generic service. In fact, the service you’re calling is some middleman who doesn’t actually perform the service, but instead contracts it out to someone local to you. They often live and operate elsewhere in the country. This is the case for flower delivery, and, I recently discovered, bee removal. I’m sure there are others. But in general if you go to a search engine and type “$service $location” (I.e. “bee removal Los Angeles”), you’ll get tons of these types of listings.
Lots of long distance movers work like this, they are just some broker middle-man often based in Florida that just makes the process more complicated and worse.
Most long distance movers aren’t. There’s a local truck and guys who load it, and then everything is offloaded at some central depot and sent to another depot where it’s loaded on a different truck for final delivery.
Door to door locked trailer is more expensive and harder to find unless you do something like pods.
Where "local truck" is "a vehicle that can fit at the location, unlike a semi" and "depot" is "nearby, where their semi is parked", sure. And they do frequently hire local help, rather than cart them across hundreds or thousands of miles.
But it's not like they're going to post office / Amazon / etc "hubs" and changing vehicles along the way - the human labor cost and increased risk would be far too high, though pods might be feasible. The same semi and the same driver does 99% of the distance, and often hires their own helpers. The local shuttling and helpers are entirely reasonable and often unavoidable.
The problem is each mode change is another chance for loss and damage. You’d often be better off palletizing everything so they can forklift it (though that has additional shipment risks).
You can't really palletize a sofa or bed, you'd need to crate it and then its going to be more expensive. If you are moving $100k+ in equipment or art thats the way to go, for home stuff maybe worth a few k$, just put it on the truck or container and hope.
That hasn't been my experience, for a few interstate moves my stuff is on the same trailer at the delivery as it was when it was loaded, although it seemed to be combined with other peoples stuff and made multiple stops for the longer moves. In certain cases when the destination street was narrow it was offloaded onto a smaller truck for the last mile.
Regardless, my experience trying to find movers is that there are a lot of brokers that will arrange either service and don't provide added value.
A parasite is an organism that survives by extracting from others.
These are bots or bots designed by mindless individuals and set loose
to do harm. They deserve even less respect than computer viruses that
at least mimic proto-lifeforms. There is no "it" to have a survival
agenda here.
Having done with "Harms", as I research the "Motives" chapter of
Ethics for Hackers I've taken an unexpected dive into criminology and
now see a blind-spot in the entrepreneurial, late-capitalist mind-set of
the "Silicon Valley" hacker space. There's a tendency to see
everything through a rather narrow lens of financial motives. Not
everything is about making a buck (although much is - at the end of
the day).
So for example, some motives out there are purely destructive. Or at
least they are so lowbrow and random in their consideration as to be
indistinguishable from entirely senseless acts.
We look at them and say "What's the business angle here?". Sometimes
there really isn't one. And it's not ideological either, like
championing free-speech, democracy, communism or whatever. Nor
discordian, nihilistic and chaotic.
Boredom, resentment, disrespct, low cost and consequences and "just
because you can" are on the up because of "AI" and automation. I think
we presume certain motives declined after the early years of
trophy-hacking and ego hacks gave way to structured cybercrime in the
90s. But machine learning and "at scale" thinking is unleashing a
different breed of senselessness. Poisoning of public data spaces by
ostensible "advertising", whether as email spam, highly adaptive
link-farms, GPT generated bait-copy and whatnot is a new quality of
threat. Search engines don't seem able to manage it, so the "internet"
(what is left of the Web) is starting to resemble a derelict
neighbourhood with smashed windows, upturned trash cans and graffiti
everywhere as bored and desperate gangs roam.
We also have the Home Advisor variant that just sells your leads. Fill out a form and get 10 phone calls in the next 2 minutes. They also make entire sites to appear as a local business like “Joe the Plumber.com” and advertise those side by side. But it’s the same leadgen bs.
18 offshore leadgen consumers jump on your post, pretend to be calling from local numbers, and offer to broker a call to a local vendor on your behalf.
Then they keep calling for several weeks just in case you don't hate them enough.
This is a common scheme with certain predatory "locksmiths" in Germany that charge extortionate fees for lockout calls, and aggressively demand it be paid cash on the spot (legally, you are entitled to pay by invoice for this service).
They extremely aggressively game Maps and AdWords to ensure that their numbers are on top of results.
Most of the guys they send out also I don't think are qualified locksmiths, based on the level of damage they tend to do when gaining access!
When I lived there I simply told my friends to call me instead, I'd get their doors open for a few beers.
Ugh. These Ghost Kitchen jerks have been spamming me for an interview. Not interested in ever working for any business associated with Travis Kalanik, thanks.
Thank you so much for this link. Great article, quite appaling ao. It seems the Uber bros now brought the gig economy to the franchising industry... I hate the gig economy with a vengeance, it ia a lazy way for the rich to profit of the poor without taking any tangible risks whatsoever. Even better, you can ignore basically all regulations, those are for the poor peasants anyeay.
Companies like Unilever have been doing this for far longer than anyone in the restaurant space. Churn out thousands of brands that supposedly "compete" with each other in the marketplace. If one of those brands has a reputation problem, shut it down and replace it. Rinse and repeat.
If the practice is distasteful, then change the law, but beware the lobbyists.
Its rampant across industries. Hotel chains have sub-brands, sometimes with suspiciously similar names.
As far as industries go, the restaurant industry is probably one of the least consolidated in the world. For every chain restaurant, there are a dozen standalone restaurants.
This is because, where regulations allow, people will literally set up a small restaurant with two plastic yard tables and a open top grill.
In the US that type of setup is pretty much illegal everywhere. Chains were becoming more prevalent, but recently we’ve basically gone back to the same model with a food truck, which is tiny and takes up a parking spot. Usually taking off the wheels is illegal though.
Cool, this is interesting... What makes the "two plastic yard tables and a open top grill" restaurant illegal? Sanitary requirements or some minimal size mandate?
Otherwise I like the concept of food trucks, to me they are a perfect way for enthusiastic chefs to start their business with low(ish) money investment.
This sounds fun. Let's pick a state that is not known for onerous regulations...how about South Dakota?
>Food employees must clean their hands in a handwashing lavatory and may not clean their hands in a sink used for food preparation or in a service sink or a curbed cleaning facility used for the disposal of mop water and similar liquid waste.
>Food must be stored in a clean, dry location where it is not exposed to splash, dust, or other contamination and is at least 15 centimeters (6 inches) above the floor
>Sufficient refrigeration facilities or other effectively insulated facilities that are conveniently located must be provided to assure the maintenance of potentially hazardous food at required temperatures during storage. Each mechanically refrigerated facility storing potentially hazardous food must be provided with a numerically scaled indicating thermometer, accurate to ±1°C (2°F), located to measure air temperature in the warmest part of the facility.
>Fruits and vegetables may be washed by using chemicals as specified in 21 C.F.R. 173.315, April 1, 1996. Any sink used to wash, prepare, store, or soak food must be indirectly connected to the sewer through an airbreak.
>A ventilation hood system must be provided over all cooking equipment which produces steam, excessive smoke, grease vapors, or odors.
>Perimeter walls and roof of a food establishment must effectively protect the establishment from the weather and the entry of insects, rodents, and other animals.
It would be hard to meet those requirements with a grill and two tables, but the list goes on:
>Food employees must clean their hands in a handwashing lavatory and may not clean their hands in a sink used for food preparation or in a service sink or a curbed cleaning facility used for the disposal of mop water and similar liquid waste.
So a restroom.
>Food must be stored in a clean, dry location where it is not exposed to splash, dust, or other contamination and is at least 15 centimeters (6 inches) above the floor.
A shelf.
>Sufficient refrigeration facilities or other effectively insulated facilities that are conveniently located must be provided to assure the maintenance of potentially hazardous food at required temperatures during storage. Each mechanically refrigerated facility storing potentially hazardous food must be provided with a numerically scaled indicating thermometer, accurate to ±1°C (2°F), located to measure air temperature in the warmest part of the facility.
A fridge and a thermometer
>Fruits and vegetables may be washed by using chemicals as specified in 21 C.F.R. 173.315, April 1, 1996. Any sink used to wash, prepare, store, or soak food must be indirectly connected to the sewer through an airbreak.
This a U shaped a filter on the drain hose, you can self install and cost a few bucks.
>A ventilation hood system must be provided over all cooking equipment which produces steam, excessive smoke, grease vapors, or odors.
A hood a standard in every kitchen.
>Perimeter walls and roof of a food establishment must effectively protect the establishment from the weather and the entry of insects, rodents, and other animals.
Walls and a roof?.
These are sanitary requirements but none of them are extra imo
How many food trucks come with a restroom? Or 4 walls and a roof, assuming that’s required to cover a shelter? Or a connection to the sewer system (which sounds pretty tenuous for a food truck, you need to find a parking space with a open sewer connection?)
They tend to have 4 walls and a roof and facilities to wash your hands: Water tanks exist - I mean, folks use toilets in an RV without them being currently hooked up to sewage, so I don't see how this is an issue. We have the tech. Hand sanitizer is likely available as well. Additionally, in many places, they have to be within a certain distance from toilets.
The sewer note is more about this particular line:
> Any sink used to wash, prepare, store, or soak food must be indirectly connected to the sewer through an airbreak, and a water tank not being suitable.
Which I interpreted as a direct sewer connection for the sink being required.
They didn't say it was impossible, just hard. Do you have a thermometer in your fridge? Did you specially modify your sink to add an airbreak? I agree, they are quite reasonable requirements, and also requirements which one does not meet if they just have a grill and two picnic tables. They would also want to have a small trailer for proper food storage.
More like common sense. I'd really wish any place that prepares my food from scratch would obey at least the ones you listed and more even if it's just a grill.
So that in the event of a clog, sewage will not be able to back up into the food. It'll spill out onto the floor instead, which is bad, but not as bad as contaminating the food directly.
In the US any sort of restaurant establishment is most likely by zoning required to have some amount of parking.
The cost of the land and asphalt for a parking space is $5-10k for a surface spot, $30k for an underground one. Two tables wouldn’t pay the interest rate on that, especially if multiple are required.
The food-trucks seem to be doing pretty well. Within a mile of where I live, there are at least two taco trucks and one barbeque truck, all permanently parked there.
There are a couple of inherent downsides to the model, namely the cost of maintaining a working motor vehicle, and the impossibility of connecting it to electric or sewer (so they all run off pretty dirty diesel generators.)
Hotel sub-brands are often (usually?) to differentiate significantly in quality / service / price. I think it would be much more reasonable for a restaurant to decide they want to cater to both fast food and fine dining (or less extreme ends of the spectrum) and to offer two experiences under different brands, than to just chuck up different brands on top of basically the same thing.
>Hotel sub-brands are often (usually?) to differentiate significantly in quality / service / price.
That's the idea anyway. There are also specific traveler personas that they target. For example, Courtyard was originally specifically designed for business travelers. Of course, a huge chain like Marriott has acquired other chains and many of its own brands have morphed over time for various reasons so a lot of the sub-brands end up looking pretty similar to each other. This isn't really hidden from consumers though. Certainly frequent travelers are well aware of the overarching company because of loyalty programs.
witeless brands inCanada is another example. Very often when you are comparison shopping for a cellphone plan you are just checking between the sub brands of 3 companies. No wonder the data plans in Canada are super expensive compared to everywhere else.
It is the same in the US, and probably around the world. I do not see how it could be possible for more than 3 or 4 wireless networks to go around putting redundant towers up all around the country, especially big countries.
It's possible. Indonesia has 7 cellphone carriers with their own infrastructure, and I think 5 of them have national coverage. Used to be more but the number got reduced over time due to mergers and acquisition. I won't be surprised if there would be only 4 major carriers left soon if the largest ones continue acquiring smaller players, which is a bad news because cellular plans used to be very expensive when there were only 3 major carriers and these smaller players brought competition which drastically reduce prices of cellular plans.
You mandate that anyone who puts up a tower has to sell physical space and connectivity for base stations of competitors on those same towers at a fair price.
Charging to recoup the cost of the infrastructure = ok.
Charging more to force competitors out or to build their own, wholly redundant, towers = illegal.
Like I wrote: covering the cost of establishing and maintaining the tower.
It's essentially a matter of declaring that the towers themselves, and the infrastructure that connect and power them, are not to be a profit maker for anyone. Can be made a condition during spectrum allocation, for example.
There's still plenty of other areas for providers to distinguish themselves.
And there's still an incentive to increase coverage. The only coverage increase incentive lost is the incentive of becoming a local monopoly. Good riddance, I say.
How many base stations can you reasonably fit on a tower, how many redundant networks (even without redundant towers) can the market support? Let's say... 3 or 4?
I guess we just hope and wish that a restaurant would have a "terroir" for a certain type of food or flavor they are good at or something authentic in any way. My soaps from Unilever will at least be different because the recipes are different, but something tells me those soups from that kitchen all taste the same.
this got me thinking - the photos of the store fronts are basically garages, with few or no tables and chairs, and few or no delivery vehicles. you'd expect in a massive city with 24/7 food services, and a large surface area to nab unsuspecting customers, there to be a fleet of mopeds awaiting outside. but instead the address given is probably just where the businesses are registered. box ticked, nothing checked. the actual "kitchen" and delivery mechanism could be based anywhere. e.g. the nearest/dirtiest friend/family/gang member to the delivery address. are we to trust that the one running this scam adheres to food safety standards? or any standards for that matter
There is couple of fundamental difference to Unilever example:
1. Similar sounding names to existing brand is trademark infringement. Here this particular entity is deliberately copying the restaurant names to mislead people into selecting them (when original restaurants are closed).
2. Assumption is Unilever creates different brands with same exacting manufacturing standards, and it stands behind them (packages will follow federal labeling guidelines). It is for A/B testing of brand collaterals (name, packaging graphics, colors, copy etc.).
Here obviously that is not the case.
It is very obvious that deception is the end goal, so really don't understand "why not" remark.
>1. Similar sounding names to existing brand is trademark infringement. Here this particular entity is deliberately copying the restaurant names to mislead people into selecting them (when original restaurants are closed).
Can you define that difference? Wingstop and Thighstop for instance are incredibly close and not enough to trigger regulatory enforcement. There is the side note that they are owned by the same entity, but do regulators know that for a fact before they decide no to enforce penalties for what you are claiming is trademark infringement?
>2. Assumption is Unilever creates different brands with same exacting manufacturing standards, and it stands behind them (packages will follow federal labeling guidelines). It is for A/B testing of brand collaterals (name, packaging graphics, colors, copy etc.). Here obviously that is not the case.
> Assumption is Unilever creates different brands with same exacting manufacturing standards...
Where did this assumption come from? That's a claim without any backing as far as I am aware. Do you honestly believe they only make different brands because they are testing how the sound of the brands name affects sales? Nothing around compartmentalizing the risk of them causing some backlash by cutting corners or getting people ill, and the ability to just cut off that one brand rather than their entire product line?
>It is very obvious that deception is the end goal, so really don't understand "why not" remark.
It is literally the opposite to me. It feels like deception is the main goal unless they make the "Product of X Conglomerate" a larger part of the packaging than the brands label, and not the minimum size required by law, or if its legally allowed, omitted entirely from the label
> Can you define that difference? Wingstop and Thighstop for instance are incredibly close..
The author of the blog clearly identified the modus operandi. He makes a very compelling case (he obviously understand the local context, can intuit things based upon the fuzzy dataset which is result of his experiencing the system over time.. etc.).
> Where did this assumption come from? (Unilever has exacting manufacturing standards) That's a claim without any backing as far as I am aware..
> Can you define that difference? Wingstop and Thighstop for instance are incredibly close and not enough to trigger regulatory enforcement
I can define the difference clearly: "whatever a court decides"
The law is intentionally fuzzy, and in the case of trademark, it's whether the names are "likely to cause consumer confusion", which is an obviously fuzzy thing that cannot be encoded in a computer or with a set of string matching rules. Which is fine, our legal system has humans in it.
If the companies are doing so with the specific intent of causing consumer confusion, then it seems like the court would have a relatively easy time at showing that such an occurrence was likely.
What the court decides is different than “similar sounding names”.
My point was that similar sounding names are not automatically infringement because they need a court to decide that the similarity doesn’t matter. I explicitly pointed out two similar sounding restaurant names owned by the same entity because either they were assumed to be IP infringement until a court decided they were not, or courts didn’t get involved by default for similar sounding names.
The whole point was to make a reductio ab absurdum argument that similarity of names did not matter in terms of IP until courts were involved, so bringing it up as a reason that ghost kitchens couldn’t make similar names a silly argument to make sans lawsuits
I don’t understand your point about Wingstop and Thighstop at all. Of course a company is allowed to “infringe” on its own trademark — in quotes because that’s not actually infringement at all. How do you know for sure it wouldn’t be enforceable if a separate restaurant had been called Thighstop?
If they decide not to pursue action due to infringement then I'd argue they're not really separate entities at all so why have them in the first place. In which case, they're performing some sort of fraud. These things are usually illegal in the context of tax-evasion ("oh he's my nephew and I give him a company car, and full-salary for 'consulting' once a month.")
There isn’t any fraud here. It’s all very normal corporate structure.
Yum! Brands owns both, and Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, etc. The restaurants themselves are owned by franchisees who license the trademarks (and all kind of complicated buy-in and standards).
Yum! Brands made ThighStop to address the wing shortage and keep the association/credibility. It’s actually weirdly transparent: just like WingStop, but thighs. I don’t know if WingStop franchisees got automatic rights to that brand or not. My guess is that it was just a way to keep them afloat.
Now, the fact that WingStop has any cred is gross. I can get better wings from a mom & pop or local chain at any strip mall, or heck, a gas station than wing chains like them, BWW, etc.
I guess America outside the South and Buffalo, NY doesn’t have access to wings that don’t taste like a salt lick. It’s a tragedy.
As far as I know -- and I've double-checked this just now -- Yum Brands does not own Wingstop (which doesn't capitalize the "s", even though we all do it automatically). They own "Wing Street", which is a sub-brand of Pizza Hut. Wingstop is an independent publicly-traded company.
Wingstop created Thighstop as a "digital brand" -- essentially, a ghost kitchen run out of existing Wingstop locations. This is a trick that a lot of chain restaurants started doing since the pandemic. Denny's runs "The Meltdown" as a sandwich shop; Chili's runs "Wings & Things"; you can find others. You can only order from "Thighstop" online, but you can add a thigh to combos when you order from Wingstop if you're so inclined.
(And I have not lived in Buffalo, New York, but I have lived in the South -- and California -- and can assure you there are many "mom and pop" wing shops and local chains that…aren't great.)
Bah! You're totally right and I'm wrong. I flipped them in my head. Thank you for the correction.
Definitely some are not great, I can name 3 within a mile of me I won't go to. And some are "sketchy" but delicious. But that also applies to barbecue, mexican, catfish, etc. around me. Just look where the locals go. If there's a line at an unexpected place, it's probably good. But if it's around a college campus, it may just be cheap :).
It's not fraud, it's pretty clear marketing. When there was a shortage of wings, they stopped selling those and started selling thighs. Thus, Thighstop. This has literally nothing to do with tax evasion - you really are not understanding what they're doing at all.
> If they decide not to pursue action due to infringement
This is kind of a bizarre thing to say... they are the same company, so there is just not universe in which Wingstop would sue itself.
>do regulators know that for a fact before they decide no to enforce penalties for what you are claiming is trademark infringement?
The regulator doesn't pursue trademark infringement cases. It is upon the trademark holder to defend their mark via proceedings. So WingstopCo would bring an action against ThighstopCo. In this case, since both marks are held by the same entity, there's no enforcement possible unless the holding entity an exclusive license to one of the marks to another party.
>Wingstop and Thighstop for instance are incredibly close and not enough to trigger regulatory enforcement. There is the side note that they are owned by the same entity, but do regulators know that for a fact before they decide no to enforce penalties for what you are claiming is trademark infringement?
Well, yes? Regulators would determine both are owned by the same entity, at which point there would be no enforcement penalty to apply.
> There is the side note that they are owned by the same entity, but do regulators know that for a fact before they decide no to enforce penalties for what you are claiming is trademark infringement?
Yes. Yes they do. Absolutely, 100%, regulators know that Wingstop and Thighstop are owned by the same entity. They know this from regulatory and administrative filings, and they know this from the advertising that could not possibly be more clear that these are the same company.
You can find thousands of comments of the form “This is no different from…” which exhibit temporary amnesia about the devil in the details. It’s hard to know if something is a harmless analogue of something else. And too often the precedent isn’t even a good precedent.
At the core is a more fundamental principle at play: reputation. The law just tries to honor this one way or another.
Reputation is a core concept in building trust in human relations, that we have subconsciously transferred to brands.
Since the dawn of time, both humans and brands are trying to fake their reputation. For instance in the old days, when communication wasn't as fast, con artists used to travel a lot, allowing them to start over after ruining their reputation.
I think for many of us it gives an innate sense of disgust because it goes agains the core of human relationships.
Exactly this. This is the same as the reason to be concerned about counterfeit products — the seller has nothing to lose if the product is dangerous or substandard, since the reputation damage happens to someone else.
Brands used to put “Established 1850” or whatever on their packaging. Now old brands aren’t respected by most consumers who are looking for that new thing they saw on an Instagram ad or learned from a YouTuber
Most brands trashed their own reputations on purpose. For any given brand, I don't know whether I'm getting their solid 2000s quality products, or their now shitty 2020s quality products.
That has happened a lot, but the gp is also correct, there are quality products that are inexpensive simply because they have been around forever, so people think they are boring or outdated. There are some really good deals on spirits for instance, that simply aren't popular, but have always been high quality. Eventually someone writes an article about it and they either raise the price, or it is unobtainable.
Perhaps legally, these nitpicks are valid. Lawyers are nitpicky types. "Deception" defined in a legally functional way, tends to see things differently to average people using common sense.
I agree with the parent, there is a lot of similarity here. You may be right that cloud kitchens are more haphazard and veer into challengeable trademark infringement. Old giants like Unilever tend to be better at legal precision.
Besides that, they're both doing the same thing. They're using brands to obfuscate, artificially manage reputation, or achieve basic marketing goals... not tell consumers who they are buying from. It's all deceptive. Fake choice, fake competition, fake diversity. It's all abusive of trademarks. Trademarks are intended to help consumers know what they're buying, create some reputational accountability. Typical FMCG strategies, like unilever and these cloud kitchens, are all about neutralising this... allow them to enjoy positive reputation while neutralising the negative reputation.
All of this is standard strategy, used often. For example. You are going for a "normal" supermarket experience: Many options for cereal, cheese, detergent, etc. Choice. But, you still want 70% cereal market share to go to vendor A. Maybe it's an internal vendor. So, fake branding. Fake diversity. Create the experience without creating the experience.
As Cloud restaurants become a mature, they'll probably learn to avoid legal trouble. But, the game will still be the game. It's not cheating if you're drunk.
The post, for example, wants to know which brands represent which kitchens. He doesn't want food from the bad kitchens. Tightening up trademark infringement will not help him.
Exactly! Some companies use their brand to differentiate their good qualities from their competition, but other companies use thousands of brands to hide themselves, obfuscate, and confuse customers. If someone publicized that they found rat poison in one of Nestle's products, Nestle would rather people just stop buying that brand and not boycott its entire portfolio of brands. That's obfuscation and deception.
>Unilever creates different brands with same exacting manufacturing standards
They absolutely don’t. Given brand of laundry detergents can be quite different between neighboring Poland and Germany, with the only visible difference being the set of languages on the label.
what unilever is doing is segmenting the market, and filling each segment with a product offering. cloud kitchens are trying to do the same, but the issue is they're not segmenting on quality at all because they're fundamentally pursuing a (lower) cost strategy. you can't differentiate on quality if you have thin margins, as implied by the cost strategy. they're primarily segmenting on (a select subset) of cuisines, which doesn't get you as far as you might think in such a competitive market as prepared food delivery.
That's not how CPG business models work. Unilever doesn't "churn out thousands of brands" to cannibalize their own portfolio. What they are doing is building brand equity and competing for sales and shelf space vs other CPG brands-- that costs a lot of money and takes years.
The cloud kitchen model is more akin to putting lipstick on pigs...
Although they are even worse because they are an example of "vertical integration" -- they own both the manufacturing of many of the major eyeglass frame brands as well as many of the chain eyeglass stores such as Lenscrafters and Pearle Vision as well as being the real owners of the optometry departments found in stores like Target and John Lewis.
Maybe we should mandate that in labelling guidelines on consumer products, the name and logo of the ultimate parent owner of the company selling the product should be prominently featured alongside whatever the regular brand is.
Many products already do it eg “TheThing: By TheParentCompany”. But yes maybe consumers should be aware who ultimately benefits from their purchase of a product, and easily be able to decide to buy more independent brands.
That is more about sponsorship disclosures. A better parallel would be with disclosure of paid or sponsored material on broadcasts.
But yes, I’d be all for that. If a bill is drafted, all the entities that had input into that draft should be listed. If a politician gives a speech at the request of a compensating entity, that should be disclosed at the beginning: “This speech was paid for in part by Audible. More on them at the end of the speech”
>the name and logo of the ultimate parent owner of the company selling the product should be prominently featured alongside whatever the regular brand is.
How do you define "ultimate parent owner of the company"? In the case of Unilever, they own the brands directly, so it's straightforward to determine the "ultimate parent owner". But it's not hard to register a separate LLC for each brand, which makes the "ultimate parent owner" much murkier, especially if the LLC has weird ownership structures.
Is blackrock the ultimate owner? Or the taxpayers of the taxpayer funded pension plans and 401k owners who Blackrock invests on behalf of the ultimate owner?
In theory, this is actually a functional service that can be useful.
I hardly ever eat out because the cost and hassle compared to the food is far, far from being a reasonable trade to me. On a daily basis, I don't want "fancy" plates of food creations, just simple but fresh and relatively healthy food like I would (or, rather, do) make for myself.
However, having a kitchen churning out fresh food, a bit like a canteen but with a delivery step (doesn't have to be direct, a "round" would work too as long as the food stays approximately fresh and arrives within a reasonable slot).
There's no need for this to happen in a restaurant with tables and tills. The most efficient system is probably a big central kitchen and a bunch of electric delivery vehicles. The economies of scale that such an operation could bring over me buying a few portions at a time, slicing single cucumbers and heating my little oven or pans to cook a few items day in day out seem like they could plausibly be favourable to outweigh the downsides (cost of delivery, lack of control over the food ingredients, quality, portion size etc).
Of course such a system, if it became dominant over others would probably very quickly fall victim to MBA syndrome as corners are cut and it ends up being school/prison slop (with a much much more expensive premium option that is basically what we already have).
And I imagine people don't like the idea of a "remote canteen" vs the romantic idea of a chef lovingly assembling a dish and carefully handing it to a courier.
So my options are to do it myself or pay multiples.
That's all nice and well, and I'd go one step further: instead of door delivery, have the vehicle put down anchor (or some temporary vending-machine like container) at some pick-up spot in walkable distance. Great opportunity for WFH isolatees to connect.
But that's all not an excuse to hide behind a fleet of faux-boutique identities. When you do that it's borderline scam. Or not borderline at all, once you accept that most of the money we spend on getting food cooked for is not about the calories and not even about the taste.
Also classic diner food is generally pretty inappropriate for using more than a few times a month because it's not very good for you.
It's more like the backend of a large, decent company canteen[1] stuck to a milk-round front end.
[1] And I don't really mean the ones that are just buying catering trays of food from a wholesaler and heating it. I worked in a factory in China for some time and their food was great. Simple, home style food, cooked right there, from scratch, every day. Lunch for everyone and an option of breakfast and dinner (mostly for residential workers). It's the only food that's not homemade that I could imagine eating daily.
The simpler option is to have a diner/canteen serving daily homestyle food nearby. Japan has neighborhood family-run places like that. Singapore has homestyle food stalls in most neighbourhoods (known as coffeeshops), though traditionally the food is pretty oily and salty.
Ultimately the why not will be because the platforms won't tolerate it. Having a kitchen so bad that it doesn't want a reputation listed lots of times isn't helping their customers any.
A few years ago I was ordering a fair amount off Postmates. One night I ordered something that was decently expensive. When it came the food looked nothing like the picture and was so bad it was borderline inedible. I threw it away in disbelief that a restaurant could possibly be this bad and after a bit of research I discovered that this wasn’t a ‘real’ restaurant - it’s one of these converted buildings that operate on a delivery only basis through the apps.
I tried to complain to Postmates but they ignored me, gave me copy/paste e-mail responses and didn’t do anything.
So I never used Postmates again, and likely never will. A lot of these businesses are run to try to make quick profits at the expense of establishing long-term trust and they will ultimately fail.
I strongly disagree with the notion that anything profitable and technically legal is fine. The whole premise of this site is that words matter. That communities matter. That applies here too.
That is the naturalistic fallacy. What is natural doesn't tell us what's good, and vice versa. Blind, amoral evolution delivered us to the point where we can make moral judgments about evolution's results, especially as it pertains to human behavior. And on the basis of those judgements, we can make choices about how we treat one another.
I'm sure it's against both's ToS but that doesn't really matter. The concern here is spamming on the third party ordering apps and clearly trying to appear as other legitimate brands. Hopefully the reviews shown in the app will detract people from ordering from them (if it were a popular restaurant then surely a low rating would be a red flag?).
There are legitimate reasons for a cloud kitchen wishing to run multiple brands/food concepts that are fine and actually very entrepreneurial. For example, someone could wish to run multiple different food concepts (Chinese, Thai, Pizza, Mexican, etc.), each with limited menus and cross use a bulk of the ingredients, and instead of having one huge disjointed menu, you can more accurately cater and be found by hungry eaters who are looking for that specific cuisine. As long as you're providing quality food at good prices then you'll be competitive with other restaurants within your chosen cuisines and be able to cater to more of the demand-side of the marketplace.
What was funny to me was the name "Taste of China" and when you look at the menu, none of it refers to common chinese food. All of it refers to indian food.
A cardinal rule of choosing restaurants is to avoid the ones with huge, unfocused menus. The quality is uniformly terrible and the kitchens are often unsanitary. I imagine that running one of these in the dark is not going to improve on that baseline.
A agree with you but I'm not sure the general public does. For a long time The Cheesecake Factory was very popular and they arguably have a large unfocused menu. I'm not saying they're good but giving how popular they were lots of people thought they were good.
There’s a specific class of “reheat Sysco” restaurants that are quite popular - Dennys, Applebees, etc. their menus are designed to have something for everyone and so are an acceptable middle ground when people don’t agree on where to go.
Same reason you’ll find a burger at the local Chinese/Mexican place, so the kids will shut up (one fo the absolute best burgers I’ve ever had was from a small burrito shop so appearances can be deceiving).
> A cardinal rule of choosing restaurants is to avoid the ones with huge, unfocused menus.
Take Behrouz Biriyani and Faasos in India. These are operated by the same company - and almost always from the same location. However because they have 2 different listings and thus 2 separate menus, they are able to create a relatively cohesive and simple menu for each listing.
So on first glance Behrouz Biriyani, looks fairly straightforward. It serves Biriyanis (with a lot of variants/sizes/combos etc). And Faasos serves wraps, rolls and other related snack foods.
If you did not know that these were essentially from the same place, you would assume that these were separate restaurants with relatively focussed menu, hence passing said cardinal rule.
With physical restaurants, the rule is easier to apply. With deliveries, it's far more difficult as the huge, unfocussed menus get separated into different restaurant listings.
Is this what will finally take down delivery? There’s also the “one restaurant, thousands of different kitchen” with mr beast opening beast burger locations all over the US thanks to ghost restaurants. It makes zero sense to me but again, I never order delivery because it’s cold, expensive, and less good.
Sorry to be the one to tell you that, but food delivery is here to stay. It is convenient, and at the end of the day, convenience trumps everything. The lesser problems (food being cold, pricing, quality) are simply optimisations waiting to happen, and actually already happening.
What OP describes is an anomaly that should be easy to fix by any platform, and if they are smart, they will fix it - or decay slowly (at least I hope this is what will happen, and that they take Amazon & Google Search with them too).
I think pricing might be biggest stumbling block and is probably the hardest to solve. Platforms want their oversized cuts, delivery is personal service so always have lower limit which is somewhat high. And restaurants themselves already have rather low margins.
Quality is just natural progression. Good food survive and bad food keep being replaced with new restaurants. Just like traditional restaurant industry.
Quality food and drink are extremely sensitive to timing, as in minutes matter, and if you are talking about a developed country keep in mind that consumers are sophisticated and getting more so by year, they are aware about it and pay attention to it and this will be reflected in the market.
If convenience really trumped everything we would all be eating dry instant noodle out of the packaging. Delivery may remain a thing in the suburbs but it would always be a second rate option.
In some ways all restaurants are ultimately fronts for Sysco. It's just way more economically feasible for restaurants to do the finish work while outsourcing as much as possible to someone that can do it in a factory sort of setting.
It's not just low quality crap restaurants that do this. Like anything you get what you pay for. Better restaurants pay for better quality stuff but still mostly prepared by Sysco and finished at the restaurant.
I don’t think people realize just how much of what is sold at restaurants comes from Sysco.
I’ve worked back of house at a “almost michelan star” restaurant (best rated in town!) and even though the chef did actually go to the butcher for meat cuts, we still had a Sysco truck stopping by every day.
I like to think about things in terms of labor input. Like if you go to a restaurant and pay $15 for a plate of pancakes then the entire labor that goes into that is less than an hour.
And that's for everything. Farmer growing wheat/chickens, cook making batter + cooking, syrup, banana growing, spices, clean up, waiter, etc.
Realistically if we're talking about just the restaurant bit there can only be a few dollars of labor and therefore maybe like 5 minutes of labor at most. Only way to achieve that is through scale.
I have friends who do grocery delivery to restaurants in early mornings and he knows which high end places sources most of their sides and even entrees from Sysco.
Food delivery isn't going anywhere. To be honest, there's been months where I haven't cooked in my kitchen. I either eat out or get my food delivered (and when I order food I'll usually order a few servings at a time for dinner or breakfast tomorrow)
Made the mistake of ordering Thai food from a ghost kitchen restaurant from Doordash in Redwood City (they have a kitchen here).
It was the worst Thai food I have ever had by about ten miles. Like, I have never had Thai food that approached "okay" - it's always been at least "good."
The rice was dry, felt like it had been out all day or maybe reheated from the fridge. The chicken was seasoned as if it had been intended for Mexican food (on its own, not bad, but didn't taste like Thai food at all). My pad thai tasted bland. How bad does a pad thai recipe need to be to taste BLAND? Unbelievable.
UK, ordered Mexican on Deliveroo from a new place, turned up.
QR code on the bag led to a Linktree that just linked 3 delivery services. No other internet presence. Drove past the address from Deliveroo on my way home and it was a row of shopfronts with iirc a delivery pizza restaurant as the only food there.
But the food was so good that my hosts have kept on ordering from there.
In the UK, I've ordered from Deliveroo Editions, which is ghost kitchens with the branding and food of real restaurant chains. It's been OK, unsurprisingly a chain with 150 branches is just reheating something made in a factory, not tasting and adjusting. So by ordering from Deliveroo Editions you get the same thing.
The UK does have the predatory type of ghost kitchen as well and I have never ordered from them. The incentives are skewed towards getting new customers, not repeat ones, and just ripping off as many as you can find.
I was evaluating natural text to speech packages a year or so a go. And I was left with the eerie feeling that at least half of the offering must have been fronts for the same company/person, if not also exactly the same software. Nowhere was this more evident than in the sing-up and payment workflows of the various packages that followed exactly same pattern. So either in one corner of that market everyone copied each other there, or somebody just saturated that corner with their offerings.
I irks me that this is a method that is resorted to in any field. I don’t like it at all. It’s a dubious practice at best. I am sure it has some advantages to a profit seeking seller, but it’s ethically pretty shitty in my opinion.
Even better: Zomato and similar companies are in it just for the money, as are those who operate “cloud kitchens” (sic), and so the result is crap food. Big surprise, right?
One of the delivery companies here in Spain Globo goes the next step and runs virtual kitchens themselves with virtual brands. I now have to double check if it’s a real restaurant before ordering anything.
i feel like i’m the only one not on the food delivery bandwagon. i have ordered delivery food exactly 0 times in the last 5 years. probably even 10. i know i’m an outlier. no i won’t change
i like to cook. i don’t see cooking as inconvenient as i cook a lot so i’m always stocked on things that are easy and taste great. id rather go pick it up because i think it’s faster and less likely to have been sitting out
Ah, reminds me of a recent experience. Looking for a local, nonchain pizza place and came across a nice Italian sounding place, Pasqually's Pizza & Wings.
Googled for more reviews, and found out it's just the fancy sounding name for the godawful Chuck E Cheese kitchen.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 153 ms ] threadIt seems like what’s happening now is similar to what happens in Amazon which is the generation of multiple throwaway brands in a bid to flood the marketplace and also farm positive ratings
The other aspect I've noticed is that most of these things are laser-targeted in terms of what they offer. Though they operate out of a full-service restaurant they'll offer just burgers, or just wings, etc. I think this one has to do with the way that the delivery apps deaccentuate the actual identities of restaurants: they really encourage you to just search/browse for a type of food, so this is sort of a gaming of that system.
I don't know anyone, at all, who does what you are suggesting in this comment.
Always better to go to a place that has its reputation on the line.
Around 2015 or so I was in charge of driving to pick up dinner for my team when we worked late. It was either that or Pizza.
Do restaurants even have their own delivery drivers any more? I actually ordered from a place recently that didz but it was the first time I'd seen that, again outside of pizza, since Chinese delivery as a child in the 1990s!
It also amuses me that if I order for pickup they assume I’m door dash when I arrive.
For the most part if you’re discerning with ratings numbers when you choose you should be good.
My suspicion on the business model with this scammer is that they go order from other restaurants after getting and order and get it for delivery. The prices in the delivery apps are generally marked up by up to 50% by the restaurants so you can do a good margin by being a shitty middle man.
This makes me think anyone running a cloud kitchen is going to always be under the thumb of the apps/landlord with no way to expand revenue.
Perhaps it makes financial sense for an existing (non-ghost) restaurants. They can expand their revenue, keep their kitchen busy, etc. So anyone from your local mom n' pop burger place to big chains (IHOP, Applebee's, etc) can run several ghost kitchen brands to increase kitchen utilization.
Even if you skip it, it’s pretty low risk in short term, just dont make anyone sick/complain!
But there are also commercial kitchen spaces you can rent. They've taken care of the inspections and permits for the food preparation facilities. You pay an hourly rate to use the facilities. Then all you have to do is make sure that your employees have their food handler's permits (a simple matter) and you're good to go.
EDIT: OK this explains a lot https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32615712
As per the EDIT yes one of my two brothers is a professional chef, I also completed a short course to be accredited as a food safety officer/supervisor (a requirement to run even a short term food business), spoke with Uber Eats about the onboarding process, discussed our brand/food options together, found a location in a pocket we thought would do well for that cuisine etc.
If this is of interest perhaps I can put a few little things together.
I didn't realize such short term things are even possible. Had assumed that even a cloud/dark kitchen setup involves long term commitments
I Made My Shed the Top-Rated Restaurant on TripAdvisor - https://www.vice.com/en/article/434gqw/i-made-my-shed-the-to...
https://www.vice.com/en/article/59d8v5/i-bullshitted-my-way-...
They did it by faking reviews not pretty pictures
Uber hasn’t monoplized marketing.
My online ordering habits are wedded to the restaurant not the middleman. (Unlike taxi trips where I am loyal to Uber not the driver).
If a restaurant gives you a shit or good meal it is a good prediction model for your experience the next time. You can’t actually commoditize Pizza as much as you would intuitively imagine.
A blind Pizza from Uber? No thanks. Pizza from XYZ Pizza who I trust via the Uber conduit. Yes please! Via the XYZ Pizza app and save $5. Hell yes!
So why would you trust any random person that makes an Uber driver account to drive you around, but not do the same for restaurants?
Restaurants do allow for repeat business, and apps have less remediation and less selection. Less selection is because a bad restaurant causes much less PR damage than a bad driver.
Uber Eats... you did your job, I got the right order, and it was delivered. Well that's just expected, you won't get any brownie points for that. What I review is the food. I have used Uber Eats probably a thousand times. I have never given anyone a 5 for their food. I want to use the whole scale. And I'm fine with occasionally eating something that I might score a 3 (using my own scale) if I'm in a hurry. But on Uber Eats (and all the other apps), absolute slop has a 4.7 rating in their app. I don't understand other people. They must be giving a 5 for something that is merely "fine" (I'm being generous here)? I'm sure there is rating manipulation going on, but it can't be that rampant. Apart from times when the order was wrong or something was missing, I stopped rating Uber Eats orders a long time ago, because that rating scale does not map well to mine.
Also, several times I have received a note in the bag saying "I hope the food is to your satisfaction and that you will give us 5 stars!". Big mistake.
I’m not going to say McDonald’s is the best food in the world, but they’re always quite consistent and sometimes it’s exactly what I wanted.
Its the same as yahoo/altavista/google.
I’d love to hear; why you did it, The pros and cons, the effort vs reward.
I had thought about doing something similar for African food in my area as there is no African food on any of the apps
Maybe this is why the owner of these restaurants has so many brands. Back when phone books were a thing, you'd see businesses named "AAA Bail Bonds" or "AAA Plumbing" [0] so they would sort first in their classification. Looking at the restaurant names they used, it appears that they want at least one of their brands to appear in every cuisine category - so no matter if you're searching for Biryani, Chinese, Curry, or Kebabs, they'll have a presence on Swiggy & Zomato.
A restaurant that specializes in every possible kind of cuisine isn't likely to be good at any of them, and it appears their ratings bear that out. :)
[0] A plot point in the The Accountant movie with Ben Affleck was that he had named his business "ZZZ Accounting" so that he wouldn't get many walk-in customers.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/slredirect/picassoRedirect.html/re...
> Question: What file system is on these 2 TB units?
> Answer: I like this product. It's useful for me. Thanks.
I did what I assume the product managers expected to happen and just ignored it because I didn’t know, but presumably some significant proportion of people will throw some nonsense answer in, and no one at Amazon then checks the question was answered.
They were absolutely terrible, like the garbage frozen cookies that SYSCO sells to restaurants. I bet you know how this ends.
Zoomed in on the map where they were supposedly from. And it was a Pizza shop that also sold the same awful cookies.
Good times…
It was actually shocking to me how and why the original restaurant was willing to dilute their brand name with that sludge. Meanwhile that ghost kitchen location 6899 Mission Street in Daly City churns out a bunch of other brand name restaurant food that aren't actually located there.
Googling the address in Daly City shows a "Local Food Hall" https://www.grubhub.com/restaurant/local-food-hall-daly-city...
Park Mediterranean, a Humphry Slocombe, a Subway and also Dosa all at the same address. And the "Local Food Hall" has locations with other restuarants cobbled together in Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Milbrae and San Jose.
I took one bite and spat it out.
The line chart was great as well showing the huge number of listings for that one kitchen.
I don’t live in India and I wondered what FSSAI is, so I looked that up as well. It’s the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India: https://www.fssai.gov.in/
The author is performing a public service that I feel ought to be done by the authority in question in the first place. I hope the article gets lots of traction and serves as an example for food safety authorities worldwide to prevent this kind of trickery.
I’m leaning towards subscribing to the author’s newsletter; at the end of the article they mention that they were the ones who posted that recent fake IMDB credit article which I also saw on HN, and I’m looking forward to reading the article on the early Indian internet (https://peabee.substack.com/p/15-mafatlal-and-the-early-indi...). (I once had a chance to see Vint Cerf give a talk and while it was a while ago I remember enjoying it.)
Last note: I thought it was kind of funny how the author resorted to using Google maps photos of the kitchens. I thought it would be worth an excursion outside to get more recent photos and see them first hand, but maybe the author has mobility issues or something. I feel it would add a personal touch though.
Now those 1000 game cartridges are all just MAME rips of commercial games.
Door to door locked trailer is more expensive and harder to find unless you do something like pods.
But it's not like they're going to post office / Amazon / etc "hubs" and changing vehicles along the way - the human labor cost and increased risk would be far too high, though pods might be feasible. The same semi and the same driver does 99% of the distance, and often hires their own helpers. The local shuttling and helpers are entirely reasonable and often unavoidable.
Regardless, my experience trying to find movers is that there are a lot of brokers that will arrange either service and don't provide added value.
You'll get these websites that whole pages consisting of nothing but text stating:
Carpet Cleaning Mount Waverley
Carpet Cleaning Glen Waverley
Carpet Cleaning Notting Hill
Carpet Cleaning Clayton
(Repeat for every suburb in Melbourne...)
etc. etc.
All of them actively seem like scams, give wildly varying quotes and frustrate you to the point where you just don't book the service at all.
Absolute parasites.
Might I disagree.
They are vandals.
A parasite is an organism that survives by extracting from others. These are bots or bots designed by mindless individuals and set loose to do harm. They deserve even less respect than computer viruses that at least mimic proto-lifeforms. There is no "it" to have a survival agenda here.
Having done with "Harms", as I research the "Motives" chapter of Ethics for Hackers I've taken an unexpected dive into criminology and now see a blind-spot in the entrepreneurial, late-capitalist mind-set of the "Silicon Valley" hacker space. There's a tendency to see everything through a rather narrow lens of financial motives. Not everything is about making a buck (although much is - at the end of the day).
So for example, some motives out there are purely destructive. Or at least they are so lowbrow and random in their consideration as to be indistinguishable from entirely senseless acts.
We look at them and say "What's the business angle here?". Sometimes there really isn't one. And it's not ideological either, like championing free-speech, democracy, communism or whatever. Nor discordian, nihilistic and chaotic.
Boredom, resentment, disrespct, low cost and consequences and "just because you can" are on the up because of "AI" and automation. I think we presume certain motives declined after the early years of trophy-hacking and ego hacks gave way to structured cybercrime in the 90s. But machine learning and "at scale" thinking is unleashing a different breed of senselessness. Poisoning of public data spaces by ostensible "advertising", whether as email spam, highly adaptive link-farms, GPT generated bait-copy and whatnot is a new quality of threat. Search engines don't seem able to manage it, so the "internet" (what is left of the Web) is starting to resemble a derelict neighbourhood with smashed windows, upturned trash cans and graffiti everywhere as bored and desperate gangs roam.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/business/fake-online-lock...
A/k/a spam-as-a-service.
18 offshore leadgen consumers jump on your post, pretend to be calling from local numbers, and offer to broker a call to a local vendor on your behalf.
Then they keep calling for several weeks just in case you don't hate them enough.
They extremely aggressively game Maps and AdWords to ensure that their numbers are on top of results.
Most of the guys they send out also I don't think are qualified locksmiths, based on the level of damage they tend to do when gaining access!
When I lived there I simply told my friends to call me instead, I'd get their doors open for a few beers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru2irhp3yPo
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjpgd7/the-mystery-of-fcking...
Companies like Unilever have been doing this for far longer than anyone in the restaurant space. Churn out thousands of brands that supposedly "compete" with each other in the marketplace. If one of those brands has a reputation problem, shut it down and replace it. Rinse and repeat.
If the practice is distasteful, then change the law, but beware the lobbyists.
As far as industries go, the restaurant industry is probably one of the least consolidated in the world. For every chain restaurant, there are a dozen standalone restaurants.
In the US that type of setup is pretty much illegal everywhere. Chains were becoming more prevalent, but recently we’ve basically gone back to the same model with a food truck, which is tiny and takes up a parking spot. Usually taking off the wheels is illegal though.
Otherwise I like the concept of food trucks, to me they are a perfect way for enthusiastic chefs to start their business with low(ish) money investment.
>Food employees must clean their hands in a handwashing lavatory and may not clean their hands in a sink used for food preparation or in a service sink or a curbed cleaning facility used for the disposal of mop water and similar liquid waste.
>Food must be stored in a clean, dry location where it is not exposed to splash, dust, or other contamination and is at least 15 centimeters (6 inches) above the floor
>Sufficient refrigeration facilities or other effectively insulated facilities that are conveniently located must be provided to assure the maintenance of potentially hazardous food at required temperatures during storage. Each mechanically refrigerated facility storing potentially hazardous food must be provided with a numerically scaled indicating thermometer, accurate to ±1°C (2°F), located to measure air temperature in the warmest part of the facility.
>Fruits and vegetables may be washed by using chemicals as specified in 21 C.F.R. 173.315, April 1, 1996. Any sink used to wash, prepare, store, or soak food must be indirectly connected to the sewer through an airbreak.
>A ventilation hood system must be provided over all cooking equipment which produces steam, excessive smoke, grease vapors, or odors.
>Perimeter walls and roof of a food establishment must effectively protect the establishment from the weather and the entry of insects, rodents, and other animals.
It would be hard to meet those requirements with a grill and two tables, but the list goes on:
https://sdlegislature.gov/Rules/Administrative/17361
So a restroom.
>Food must be stored in a clean, dry location where it is not exposed to splash, dust, or other contamination and is at least 15 centimeters (6 inches) above the floor.
A shelf.
>Sufficient refrigeration facilities or other effectively insulated facilities that are conveniently located must be provided to assure the maintenance of potentially hazardous food at required temperatures during storage. Each mechanically refrigerated facility storing potentially hazardous food must be provided with a numerically scaled indicating thermometer, accurate to ±1°C (2°F), located to measure air temperature in the warmest part of the facility.
A fridge and a thermometer
>Fruits and vegetables may be washed by using chemicals as specified in 21 C.F.R. 173.315, April 1, 1996. Any sink used to wash, prepare, store, or soak food must be indirectly connected to the sewer through an airbreak.
This a U shaped a filter on the drain hose, you can self install and cost a few bucks.
>A ventilation hood system must be provided over all cooking equipment which produces steam, excessive smoke, grease vapors, or odors.
A hood a standard in every kitchen.
>Perimeter walls and roof of a food establishment must effectively protect the establishment from the weather and the entry of insects, rodents, and other animals.
Walls and a roof?.
These are sanitary requirements but none of them are extra imo
These add up fast.
> Any sink used to wash, prepare, store, or soak food must be indirectly connected to the sewer through an airbreak, and a water tank not being suitable.
Which I interpreted as a direct sewer connection for the sink being required.
More like common sense. I'd really wish any place that prepares my food from scratch would obey at least the ones you listed and more even if it's just a grill.
A land of the free would truly have to be a home of the brave.
The cost of the land and asphalt for a parking space is $5-10k for a surface spot, $30k for an underground one. Two tables wouldn’t pay the interest rate on that, especially if multiple are required.
That's the idea anyway. There are also specific traveler personas that they target. For example, Courtyard was originally specifically designed for business travelers. Of course, a huge chain like Marriott has acquired other chains and many of its own brands have morphed over time for various reasons so a lot of the sub-brands end up looking pretty similar to each other. This isn't really hidden from consumers though. Certainly frequent travelers are well aware of the overarching company because of loyalty programs.
Charging to recoup the cost of the infrastructure = ok.
Charging more to force competitors out or to build their own, wholly redundant, towers = illegal.
It's essentially a matter of declaring that the towers themselves, and the infrastructure that connect and power them, are not to be a profit maker for anyone. Can be made a condition during spectrum allocation, for example.
There's still plenty of other areas for providers to distinguish themselves.
And there's still an incentive to increase coverage. The only coverage increase incentive lost is the incentive of becoming a local monopoly. Good riddance, I say.
They're already required to make sure the tower doesn't fall in someone's head. That cuts into profit. But they still do it.
this got me thinking - the photos of the store fronts are basically garages, with few or no tables and chairs, and few or no delivery vehicles. you'd expect in a massive city with 24/7 food services, and a large surface area to nab unsuspecting customers, there to be a fleet of mopeds awaiting outside. but instead the address given is probably just where the businesses are registered. box ticked, nothing checked. the actual "kitchen" and delivery mechanism could be based anywhere. e.g. the nearest/dirtiest friend/family/gang member to the delivery address. are we to trust that the one running this scam adheres to food safety standards? or any standards for that matter
There is couple of fundamental difference to Unilever example:
1. Similar sounding names to existing brand is trademark infringement. Here this particular entity is deliberately copying the restaurant names to mislead people into selecting them (when original restaurants are closed).
2. Assumption is Unilever creates different brands with same exacting manufacturing standards, and it stands behind them (packages will follow federal labeling guidelines). It is for A/B testing of brand collaterals (name, packaging graphics, colors, copy etc.). Here obviously that is not the case.
It is very obvious that deception is the end goal, so really don't understand "why not" remark.
Can you define that difference? Wingstop and Thighstop for instance are incredibly close and not enough to trigger regulatory enforcement. There is the side note that they are owned by the same entity, but do regulators know that for a fact before they decide no to enforce penalties for what you are claiming is trademark infringement?
>2. Assumption is Unilever creates different brands with same exacting manufacturing standards, and it stands behind them (packages will follow federal labeling guidelines). It is for A/B testing of brand collaterals (name, packaging graphics, colors, copy etc.). Here obviously that is not the case.
> Assumption is Unilever creates different brands with same exacting manufacturing standards...
Where did this assumption come from? That's a claim without any backing as far as I am aware. Do you honestly believe they only make different brands because they are testing how the sound of the brands name affects sales? Nothing around compartmentalizing the risk of them causing some backlash by cutting corners or getting people ill, and the ability to just cut off that one brand rather than their entire product line?
>It is very obvious that deception is the end goal, so really don't understand "why not" remark.
It is literally the opposite to me. It feels like deception is the main goal unless they make the "Product of X Conglomerate" a larger part of the packaging than the brands label, and not the minimum size required by law, or if its legally allowed, omitted entirely from the label
> Can you define that difference? Wingstop and Thighstop for instance are incredibly close..
The author of the blog clearly identified the modus operandi. He makes a very compelling case (he obviously understand the local context, can intuit things based upon the fuzzy dataset which is result of his experiencing the system over time.. etc.).
> Where did this assumption come from? (Unilever has exacting manufacturing standards) That's a claim without any backing as far as I am aware..
The knowledge of how world works and is typically built if one is curious enough. https://www.unilever.com/news/news-search/2022/shining-a-lig...
I can define the difference clearly: "whatever a court decides"
The law is intentionally fuzzy, and in the case of trademark, it's whether the names are "likely to cause consumer confusion", which is an obviously fuzzy thing that cannot be encoded in a computer or with a set of string matching rules. Which is fine, our legal system has humans in it.
If the companies are doing so with the specific intent of causing consumer confusion, then it seems like the court would have a relatively easy time at showing that such an occurrence was likely.
My point was that similar sounding names are not automatically infringement because they need a court to decide that the similarity doesn’t matter. I explicitly pointed out two similar sounding restaurant names owned by the same entity because either they were assumed to be IP infringement until a court decided they were not, or courts didn’t get involved by default for similar sounding names.
The whole point was to make a reductio ab absurdum argument that similarity of names did not matter in terms of IP until courts were involved, so bringing it up as a reason that ghost kitchens couldn’t make similar names a silly argument to make sans lawsuits
Yum! Brands owns both, and Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, etc. The restaurants themselves are owned by franchisees who license the trademarks (and all kind of complicated buy-in and standards).
Yum! Brands made ThighStop to address the wing shortage and keep the association/credibility. It’s actually weirdly transparent: just like WingStop, but thighs. I don’t know if WingStop franchisees got automatic rights to that brand or not. My guess is that it was just a way to keep them afloat.
Now, the fact that WingStop has any cred is gross. I can get better wings from a mom & pop or local chain at any strip mall, or heck, a gas station than wing chains like them, BWW, etc.
I guess America outside the South and Buffalo, NY doesn’t have access to wings that don’t taste like a salt lick. It’s a tragedy.
Or you make them at home. Which is very straightforward.
As far as I know -- and I've double-checked this just now -- Yum Brands does not own Wingstop (which doesn't capitalize the "s", even though we all do it automatically). They own "Wing Street", which is a sub-brand of Pizza Hut. Wingstop is an independent publicly-traded company.
Wingstop created Thighstop as a "digital brand" -- essentially, a ghost kitchen run out of existing Wingstop locations. This is a trick that a lot of chain restaurants started doing since the pandemic. Denny's runs "The Meltdown" as a sandwich shop; Chili's runs "Wings & Things"; you can find others. You can only order from "Thighstop" online, but you can add a thigh to combos when you order from Wingstop if you're so inclined.
(And I have not lived in Buffalo, New York, but I have lived in the South -- and California -- and can assure you there are many "mom and pop" wing shops and local chains that…aren't great.)
Definitely some are not great, I can name 3 within a mile of me I won't go to. And some are "sketchy" but delicious. But that also applies to barbecue, mexican, catfish, etc. around me. Just look where the locals go. If there's a line at an unexpected place, it's probably good. But if it's around a college campus, it may just be cheap :).
> If they decide not to pursue action due to infringement
This is kind of a bizarre thing to say... they are the same company, so there is just not universe in which Wingstop would sue itself.
This is no more fraudulent or shady than Apple having a brand called “MacBook Pro” and another one called “MacBook Air”.
I've been told that trademark proceedings have to be initiated by the holder, and that the holder failing to do so is how certain phrases can become common names for a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...
But IANAL.
The regulator doesn't pursue trademark infringement cases. It is upon the trademark holder to defend their mark via proceedings. So WingstopCo would bring an action against ThighstopCo. In this case, since both marks are held by the same entity, there's no enforcement possible unless the holding entity an exclusive license to one of the marks to another party.
Well, yes? Regulators would determine both are owned by the same entity, at which point there would be no enforcement penalty to apply.
Yes. Yes they do. Absolutely, 100%, regulators know that Wingstop and Thighstop are owned by the same entity. They know this from regulatory and administrative filings, and they know this from the advertising that could not possibly be more clear that these are the same company.
Here, Rick Ross can explain it to you in no uncertain terms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTx4YuMa3cQ
Reputation is a core concept in building trust in human relations, that we have subconsciously transferred to brands.
Since the dawn of time, both humans and brands are trying to fake their reputation. For instance in the old days, when communication wasn't as fast, con artists used to travel a lot, allowing them to start over after ruining their reputation.
I think for many of us it gives an innate sense of disgust because it goes agains the core of human relationships.
I agree with the parent, there is a lot of similarity here. You may be right that cloud kitchens are more haphazard and veer into challengeable trademark infringement. Old giants like Unilever tend to be better at legal precision.
Besides that, they're both doing the same thing. They're using brands to obfuscate, artificially manage reputation, or achieve basic marketing goals... not tell consumers who they are buying from. It's all deceptive. Fake choice, fake competition, fake diversity. It's all abusive of trademarks. Trademarks are intended to help consumers know what they're buying, create some reputational accountability. Typical FMCG strategies, like unilever and these cloud kitchens, are all about neutralising this... allow them to enjoy positive reputation while neutralising the negative reputation.
All of this is standard strategy, used often. For example. You are going for a "normal" supermarket experience: Many options for cereal, cheese, detergent, etc. Choice. But, you still want 70% cereal market share to go to vendor A. Maybe it's an internal vendor. So, fake branding. Fake diversity. Create the experience without creating the experience.
As Cloud restaurants become a mature, they'll probably learn to avoid legal trouble. But, the game will still be the game. It's not cheating if you're drunk.
The post, for example, wants to know which brands represent which kitchens. He doesn't want food from the bad kitchens. Tightening up trademark infringement will not help him.
They absolutely don’t. Given brand of laundry detergents can be quite different between neighboring Poland and Germany, with the only visible difference being the set of languages on the label.
The cloud kitchen model is more akin to putting lipstick on pigs...
The branding of the parent entity must be more prominent than any subbrand on any packaging or promotional material.
Or, you know, use morals and conscience.
This is the same reason why murder us illegal even though most people wouldn't do it anyways.
Many products already do it eg “TheThing: By TheParentCompany”. But yes maybe consumers should be aware who ultimately benefits from their purchase of a product, and easily be able to decide to buy more independent brands.
But yes, I’d be all for that. If a bill is drafted, all the entities that had input into that draft should be listed. If a politician gives a speech at the request of a compensating entity, that should be disclosed at the beginning: “This speech was paid for in part by Audible. More on them at the end of the speech”
How do you define "ultimate parent owner of the company"? In the case of Unilever, they own the brands directly, so it's straightforward to determine the "ultimate parent owner". But it's not hard to register a separate LLC for each brand, which makes the "ultimate parent owner" much murkier, especially if the LLC has weird ownership structures.
I hardly ever eat out because the cost and hassle compared to the food is far, far from being a reasonable trade to me. On a daily basis, I don't want "fancy" plates of food creations, just simple but fresh and relatively healthy food like I would (or, rather, do) make for myself.
However, having a kitchen churning out fresh food, a bit like a canteen but with a delivery step (doesn't have to be direct, a "round" would work too as long as the food stays approximately fresh and arrives within a reasonable slot).
There's no need for this to happen in a restaurant with tables and tills. The most efficient system is probably a big central kitchen and a bunch of electric delivery vehicles. The economies of scale that such an operation could bring over me buying a few portions at a time, slicing single cucumbers and heating my little oven or pans to cook a few items day in day out seem like they could plausibly be favourable to outweigh the downsides (cost of delivery, lack of control over the food ingredients, quality, portion size etc).
Of course such a system, if it became dominant over others would probably very quickly fall victim to MBA syndrome as corners are cut and it ends up being school/prison slop (with a much much more expensive premium option that is basically what we already have).
And I imagine people don't like the idea of a "remote canteen" vs the romantic idea of a chef lovingly assembling a dish and carefully handing it to a courier.
So my options are to do it myself or pay multiples.
But that's all not an excuse to hide behind a fleet of faux-boutique identities. When you do that it's borderline scam. Or not borderline at all, once you accept that most of the money we spend on getting food cooked for is not about the calories and not even about the taste.
> But that's all not an excuse to hide behind a fleet of faux-boutique identities.
Absolutely agreed. And of all places I won't use once they've demonstrated untrustworthyness, food providers are top of the list.
Not only is what you do (and don't) eat rather important, but also it's something that I can actually do myself.
If I don't trust CPU manufacturers not to backdoor my computer, I have limited options. If I don't trust a restaurant, I can pan fry my own tofu.
Also classic diner food is generally pretty inappropriate for using more than a few times a month because it's not very good for you.
It's more like the backend of a large, decent company canteen[1] stuck to a milk-round front end.
[1] And I don't really mean the ones that are just buying catering trays of food from a wholesaler and heating it. I worked in a factory in China for some time and their food was great. Simple, home style food, cooked right there, from scratch, every day. Lunch for everyone and an option of breakfast and dinner (mostly for residential workers). It's the only food that's not homemade that I could imagine eating daily.
Lobby to change the law but beware lobbying?
lobbyist: A person who is paid to lobby politicians and encourage them to vote a certain way or otherwise use their office to effect a desired result.
Emphasis on paid.
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/lobbyist
Lobbying isn’t a bad thing. Charities, unions, NGOs all lobby, and they use lobbyists to do it.
A few years ago I was ordering a fair amount off Postmates. One night I ordered something that was decently expensive. When it came the food looked nothing like the picture and was so bad it was borderline inedible. I threw it away in disbelief that a restaurant could possibly be this bad and after a bit of research I discovered that this wasn’t a ‘real’ restaurant - it’s one of these converted buildings that operate on a delivery only basis through the apps.
I tried to complain to Postmates but they ignored me, gave me copy/paste e-mail responses and didn’t do anything.
So I never used Postmates again, and likely never will. A lot of these businesses are run to try to make quick profits at the expense of establishing long-term trust and they will ultimately fail.
https://www.icecreamshopus.com/
This applies to pretty much all areas of life:
Food delivery, Web scraping, personal relationships, insider trading, nation building, you name it.
Also intent/appearance of sincerity matters: "When Two Do The Same Thing, It Is Not The Same Thing After All."
There are legitimate reasons for a cloud kitchen wishing to run multiple brands/food concepts that are fine and actually very entrepreneurial. For example, someone could wish to run multiple different food concepts (Chinese, Thai, Pizza, Mexican, etc.), each with limited menus and cross use a bulk of the ingredients, and instead of having one huge disjointed menu, you can more accurately cater and be found by hungry eaters who are looking for that specific cuisine. As long as you're providing quality food at good prices then you'll be competitive with other restaurants within your chosen cuisines and be able to cater to more of the demand-side of the marketplace.
I was astonished that the first one seemed to actually have tables!
Same reason you’ll find a burger at the local Chinese/Mexican place, so the kids will shut up (one fo the absolute best burgers I’ve ever had was from a small burrito shop so appearances can be deceiving).
Take Behrouz Biriyani and Faasos in India. These are operated by the same company - and almost always from the same location. However because they have 2 different listings and thus 2 separate menus, they are able to create a relatively cohesive and simple menu for each listing.
So on first glance Behrouz Biriyani, looks fairly straightforward. It serves Biriyanis (with a lot of variants/sizes/combos etc). And Faasos serves wraps, rolls and other related snack foods.
If you did not know that these were essentially from the same place, you would assume that these were separate restaurants with relatively focussed menu, hence passing said cardinal rule.
With physical restaurants, the rule is easier to apply. With deliveries, it's far more difficult as the huge, unfocussed menus get separated into different restaurant listings.
What OP describes is an anomaly that should be easy to fix by any platform, and if they are smart, they will fix it - or decay slowly (at least I hope this is what will happen, and that they take Amazon & Google Search with them too).
Quality is just natural progression. Good food survive and bad food keep being replaced with new restaurants. Just like traditional restaurant industry.
Quality food and drink are extremely sensitive to timing, as in minutes matter, and if you are talking about a developed country keep in mind that consumers are sophisticated and getting more so by year, they are aware about it and pay attention to it and this will be reflected in the market.
If convenience really trumped everything we would all be eating dry instant noodle out of the packaging. Delivery may remain a thing in the suburbs but it would always be a second rate option.
It's not just low quality crap restaurants that do this. Like anything you get what you pay for. Better restaurants pay for better quality stuff but still mostly prepared by Sysco and finished at the restaurant.
I’ve worked back of house at a “almost michelan star” restaurant (best rated in town!) and even though the chef did actually go to the butcher for meat cuts, we still had a Sysco truck stopping by every day.
And that's for everything. Farmer growing wheat/chickens, cook making batter + cooking, syrup, banana growing, spices, clean up, waiter, etc.
Realistically if we're talking about just the restaurant bit there can only be a few dollars of labor and therefore maybe like 5 minutes of labor at most. Only way to achieve that is through scale.
It was the worst Thai food I have ever had by about ten miles. Like, I have never had Thai food that approached "okay" - it's always been at least "good."
The rice was dry, felt like it had been out all day or maybe reheated from the fridge. The chicken was seasoned as if it had been intended for Mexican food (on its own, not bad, but didn't taste like Thai food at all). My pad thai tasted bland. How bad does a pad thai recipe need to be to taste BLAND? Unbelievable.
QR code on the bag led to a Linktree that just linked 3 delivery services. No other internet presence. Drove past the address from Deliveroo on my way home and it was a row of shopfronts with iirc a delivery pizza restaurant as the only food there.
But the food was so good that my hosts have kept on ordering from there.
The UK does have the predatory type of ghost kitchen as well and I have never ordered from them. The incentives are skewed towards getting new customers, not repeat ones, and just ripping off as many as you can find.
From the article
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32339894
Googled for more reviews, and found out it's just the fancy sounding name for the godawful Chuck E Cheese kitchen.