DJ Steve Aoki quietly opens a cloud only pizza restaurant in Oakland | Hacker News Reader

DJ Steve Aoki quietly opens a cloud only pizza restaurant in Oakland

berkeleyside.com

12 pointsbelltaco14 comments

It's Amazon house brands, but for generic takeout food. In my mind, it's the culinary equivalent of frozen dinners for people willing to pay extra to have someone else stick it in a microwave for them and then drive it to their house. An EDM DJ putting his name on the box just gives me the false hope that I'll be able to get my groove on while eating the equivalent of a Tombstone.

Judging by the 2 pictures in the "article", I think you're right. We will start seeing a rise of fake branded delivery food, all coming from the same ovens.

Hate to admit it, but a bunch of ideas from this article really resonated with me

1) Convenience of ordering, speed, & price > atmosphere (edit: for pizza joints at least)

2) Shorter menus

3) Goofy marketing gimmicks (aoki) help me convince friends to get out of their comfort zone and try new things. Instead of saying 'want to get some pizza' I can say 'did you know that awful DJ opened a restaurant in Oakland?? we gotta try it!'

4) it's just more efficient to expand the kitchen size than have more room for seating. The weather is amazing 11/12 months of the year, let's eat outside. Or more likely in our overpriced apartment

5) I get about the same enjoyment from frozen pizza as fancy pizza. They're both equally terrible for your health, may as well save a few bucks

> I get about the same enjoyment from frozen pizza as fancy pizza.

Do you live in Ohio?

>> I get about the same enjoyment from frozen pizza as fancy pizza.

Dominos, Papa Johns and especially Pizza Hut are not real pizza. They're about the same shit as a grocery store frozen puck.

Try a real pizza place some time. For instance... If you're ever in Southern Palm Beach County in Florida, try Jack's Pizza. Or find a family run place near you...

I lived in Brooklyn near Robertas and used to work in little Italy (the real one, Arthur st in the Bronx). I’ve tasted the best American pizza you can buy. If I’m just feeding myself I’ll usually opt for dominoes or something. I’m just not really a foodie especially when it comes to greasy food like that.

> a total of 12 pizza brands, almost all being delivery-only restaurants. As in Oakland, each location hosts several brands in one space,

> Customers can order thick crust pizzas from Chubby Pie or Thick & Tasty; New York-style from Gabriella’s, Lorenzo’s or Joe’s; Chicago-style from Froman’s; etc. Vavra said although multiple brands use the same kitchen, each uses different recipes and ingredients. He said sauces and doughs are made in-house, and Family Style either creates its own recipes or licenses recipes from chefs. “We look at each brand as its own company,” he said, “Every product we put out is distinct from the other product.”

That sounds like a nice theory at first, but after putting more thought into it I'm strongly opposed to it. A single pizza shop could offer several recipes under one brand if variety was their objective. However by putting several brands into one location and concealing that fact from consumers, they are attacking the consumer's ability to make savvy informed purchasing decisions. If somebody has a food quality issue with a pie from a normal pizza shop, they might avoid that pizza shop in the future. However this scheme makes that more challenging since you need to be sure you don't order a pie from the same shop (with the same quality/sanitation issues) operating under a different brand.

This practice should be illegal without clear and prominent disclosure.

Should two pizza shops be allowed to buy cheese from the same supplier? It's the same problem, right?

No, that's not the same problem. That a similar but less severe problem. The way a restaurant handles food is far more likely to make you sick than the ingredients being defective from the supplier. A chef who doesn't wash his hands after wiping his ass is more likely than contaminated cheese. Employees who carelessly handle pizzas and deliver them to you turned upside-down are more likely than contaminated pepperonis.

Certainly sometimes ingredients are defective from the supplier. This has famously happened several times with contaminated produce, but there are various examples. In those cases the consumers already lack insight into who the suppliers of a restaurant are, and you could talk me into believing that should be changed.

When a single shop is operating multiple brands, "Avoid Alice's Pizza because I saw a rat there" becomes "Avoid Alices's Pizza, and Bob's Pizza, and Sally's Pizza, and Tom's Pizza, and ...., because I saw a rat there." It should be clear how anti-consumer this is. It interferes with the ability of consumers to inform each other by artificially increasing the number of brand names they need to keep straight in their heads.

Edit for response:

> "This statement needs support."

Does it really though? Local restaurant inspection records are generally public. Go read them if you doubt me; violations abound. It's not even a close contest, there are a load of filthy restaurants out there and local inspectors are often incompetent, underfunded, understaffed, corrupt, or otherwise not doing their job well. Word of mouth through the community about which restaurants to avoid serves an important role in keeping consumers safe. Steve Aoki's business model is a direct attack on that.

If he were truly proud of these pizza shops, he could put his name on them. He could make "Chubby Pie" be "Steve Aoki's Chubby Pie". Then he could have his name on something that he's proud of and consumers would be informed. But I doubt he's going to do that because duping consumers seems to be the true purpose of this scheme.

Here is an example from San Francisco: https://101g-xnet.sfdph.org:8443/ords/eeopn/f?p=132:2:::NO::...

Every city in the country has hundreds if not thousands of cases like this.

> The way a restaurant handles food is far more likely to make you sick than the ingredients being defective from the supplier

This statement needs support.

Calling to criminalize anything you even mildly oppose is reckless at best. You think if you noticed that two pizza places shared a kitchen, you’d feel the correct response was calling the cops?

I didn't say I mildly oppose it, I explicitly said I strongly oppose it.

> "You think if you noticed that two pizza places shared a kitchen, you’d feel the correct response was calling the cops?"

If such a law were passed, I would feel correct in calling the relevant authorities. Such a law does not currently exist, so calling the police would obviously be pointless.

Many car brands are owned by the same company (see for example GM), many beverage companies are owned by the same company (see for example Coke or Pepsi), many beer companies, many electric drill companies, restaurant chains, hotel chains, candy companies, toilet makers, shampoo brands, and faucet manufacturers use this technique as well. I hear you arguing that Pizza however is clearly different and anyone proposing to bring hundred year old brand management practices to Pizza clearly needs to serve time in jail. I suspect if you looked into modern commercial kitchen practices, where restaurants commonly share kitchen facilities, you would be surprised to say the least.

I don't agree with the op, but most of your analogies miss the point. The op is essentially talking about manufacturing. So perhaps a bottling plant voting student branded sodas or beers. Perhaps a car company making several different brands in the same plant. It isn't just about one company owning several products. If it's about several products being made under one roof, but all appearances make it look like they are different. I don't agree with the op though.

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