Single SF restaurant may be operating 70 different storefronts on DoorDash | Hacker News Reader

Single SF restaurant may be operating 70 different storefronts on DoorDash

sfgate.com

60 pointsgwintrob34 comments

I had known that "It's just Wings" was chilis the first time I bought it, but I did not know how bad "Ghost Kitchens" were until the "The Deceptive World of Ghost Kitchens" video. It's worth a watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkIkymh5Ayg

Some of these ghost kitchens even do branded food like Chic Fil A. I’d guess to take the delivery strain off the main store, but it is bizarre to see people walk out with fresh chic fil a from a nondescript commercial warehouse property.

This model was pioneered in Oakland by Steve Aoki's "Pizzaoki" location, also known as Lorenzo's, Thick & Tasty, Happy Slice Pizza, Gabriella’s New York City Pizza, Chubby Pie and each of other pizza joints listed at 536 Lake Park Ave. They used DBAs to surface under different keyword searches on various delivery apps and cycle out poorly rated brand names. Pizza was pretty mid too.

What is DBA?

It stands for Doing Business As[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_name

Thanks. As a fairly long-time database administrator, I couldn't quite figure twochillin's comment.

Okay, why be down-voting a perfectly valid question? Just because I (or you) knew the answer don't mean everyone does, and down-voting the question "ghosts" the answer as well, so other folks who might have the same question will end up havin' to ask it again instead of benefiting from the (correct) answer already here.

Thanks for the info I always wondered what was going on there.

I've gone to Gabriella's in the mission a number of times. It's one of the only authentic New York slices you can get in the city for people who crave the taste of home

I only order from local biz i personally went to in the past.

All you can get from delivery apps are images and rating numbers, both are easy to fake.

IMHO the marketing effort to disconnect real people from what they make is anti human

What is bad is that sometimes the delivery page isnt even the actual restaurants website but a service that scrapped the restaurant and charged you more. I ordered from one of these once and luckily the restaurant declined the order and explained to me what happened. Basically I ordered online on what I thought was the restaurants site, it turned out it was the squatters, who then tried to call in my online order to the restaurant. Sometimes the url and even the phone number of a given restaurant have been stolen already on google maps. You can’t trust whats published at all with the amount of scam websites there are these days.

Soon after I moved into this place in 2015, I received a flyer from a "restaurant" and all my neighbors got the same one. This flyer was a high-quality glossy print with menu from an ostensibly Chinese delivery joint. It was notable in having no physical address, no website, no delivery area delineated. When I called the number, it was some sort of mailbox-full or disconnected from a mobile carrier. It was totally hinky, so I call the cops and they're like, "we can't do anything about this if there's no victim" so I guess unless they were stealing my credit card, there was nothing to be done. I suspect that it was an early "ghost kitchen" sort of situation.

Later I received more flyers from a joint with a different name, but the same style of flyer and all. I look them up online and they have an address that's supposedly right across the street, but no legit business exists there, just a vacancy. They're on Facebook too with a similarly faked address. I grumble and figure there's nothing to be done.

Later, I found a whole passel of these ghost kitchens had coalesced in an industrial-zoned district nearby. Apparently there's a building named "Food Court" that houses them all, and they all advertise through GrubHub and DoorDash, etc. Once, I accidentally ordered from one of them, and they indeed sent me a passable Thai larb. I was kinda shocked, and they inserted a coupon for a competing food delivery service, which I informed GH about.

These days I just try to be careful and spot the ghost kitchens while ordering. I really only order from legit chains or local places with a real reputation for having a real location, real food, and real employees. Usually someplace I've physically traveled to, sat down and ate food there. YMMV.

I’m not sure if only ordering from legit chains helps anymore. I’ve heard (and it’s mentioned elsewhere in this thread) of chains sub-contracting with ghost kitchens to offload the delivery traffic from their real locations. No idea on how they can do quality control with these sub-contractors.

It is called a "Cloud Restaurant" or a "Cloud Kitchen" and it happens all the time

"Ghost Kitchen" is more common in my area.

Isn't this just the food equivalent of software whitelabeling?

I would be very peed off, if I knew.

That's like order burger from big bapas and getting McRib served. It's fraud in my eye, but legal.. if I go to a restaurant by name the great still the first time, I don't know if it's chili's pizza pasta chain restaurant. Upon knowing, I would not go there a second Time.

What they're doing is harm the experience of app usages. If I would be door dash I'd sue the Frack out the party.

DoorDash and others have known about these for years. At this point there’s no way they aren’t complicit.

These ghost kitchens bloat up the list of restaurants for user choice probably making people think more food is available.

Yes you're right here. It comes handy for DoorDash to have a blown up restaurant list. But only 'till a certain level. More than that might be the end of DoorDash. If found users think like "is this fake, again?" each time they're about to use it, and certainly stop to use it at all. The same for the paying customers. They may stop to use it because of the bad image or, just a concentrated action organized by the competition, can mean 'ima out'

They're more than complicit. Either DoorDash or UberEats (I can't remember which; maybe both do) tries to persuade restaurants to license their brand to ghost kitchens run by the delivery company.

Source: Been on those calls.

In New York they just call that a Dinner.

Isn't that fraud?

Some would just call that entrepreneurship.

Some called DoorDash pocketing tips "entrepeneurship". Whether that's true or not, it was still fraud as far as I'm concerned.

Fraud of what, you pay, they give you food? They're not selling shares or something

I suppose it could constitute a kind of fraud because someone who has decided not to do business with you can then be duped into doing business with you again.

white labeling, store renaming, etc would all fall under fraud if that were the case

Only if their intent is deception. Here is a good litmus test. If the executives think real hard and focus test how to rename something to trick people and hide their negative reputation, then that should be fraud.

If interested, a related legal concept in trademarks is called passing off https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_off

Not necessarily, but absolutely potentially.

Certainly it's questionable that it encourages market participants to be informed, rational and consenting actors, which we are told is a foundational principle of a market economy.

Wait till you find out about store brands.

Does anyone have recent intel on Travis Kalanick's CloudKitchens?

I recall the super shady company recruiting policy a few years ago, but haven't heard much since.

The guy on the fixie looking unamused is peak sf.

If this bothers you, and you live in the US, ask the US Congress to change federal trademark law so a business that has a registered trademark (or that licenses someone else's trademark) must use that trademark on every product they sell.

This would let us know who owns what.

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