The Deceptive World of Ghost Kitchens
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Jacksfilms just appearing out of nowhere only to host a focus group is incredible
I wasn’t really looking and all of the sudden I recognized it was Jack’s voice which was a pleasant surprise
Oh my god I had this video on in the background as I was working on something, now I need to go back to watch that segment again
I was worried by the intro he started one of these ghost kitchens without me realizing
@MrsugarpantsIDK about time he got one
Who?
i used to be a doordash driver and there were times i would just be frantically looking around the parking lot for a restaurant that doesnât⌠actually exist⌠and then it ended up being inside huge chain restaurants like ihop or buffalo wild wings⌠!!!! i never even cared to look pass the frustration of wasting time. this is insane, thanks so much for covering this
â@lele jane another problem that people aren’t mentioning is the fact that these are the same kitchens that also make vegan items. I can’t imagine vegan people eating their ‘vegan’ chicken made in the same grill as all these other non vegan restaurants.
@Liam GallagherYouâre talking to a brick wall there
â@Brandon Sargent eddie literally talks about how these ghost kitchens run mom and pop shops out of buissness. How they actively try to skirt regulations and how in general they produce lower quality food. So as an American citizen, you want me to pay more in taxes so the government can try to regulate an industry they already struggle to normally regulate? And those buissness will put a bunch of other small high quality food restaurants out of buissness. And I’m eating shitty food. You sound like a shill not because your calling for regulations, but because your calling for the wrong type of regulations. If a buissness actively harms all other buissness in its industry and degrades the national quality of that industry, it should be banned.
@Liam Gallagher Iâm literally advocating for more and better government regulation and youâre calling me a shill lolololol – Classic YouTube comment section
â@Brandon Sargent “let’s let buissness owners illegally skirt regulations and endanger hundreds of thousands of people nationwide because as small buissness owners they have a right to sell tainted chicken” you sound like a corporate shill.
ALSO! Some ârestaurantsâ appear at the top of Google searches but they buy the food from another restaurant they are acting as and charge the customer more for it. There are so many food scams. I think this one is worse because if you eat something you are allergic to you could become seriously sick or worse đđ
Edit: wanted to add a thank you to Eddy for covering this! Itâs extremely important! Imma send this to everyone I know who orders or has food allergies!
Iâve heard of that there was a pizza place that was pissed that a company bought and ad and pretended to be the pizza place and took orders for pizza place and then proceeded to go to the pizza place and pick up the order and then charged customers extra
I know the perfect restaurant for this model: The Rainforest đ¸đŚ Cafe
The thing that sucks about this is that ghost kitchens genuinely can be used to start up small businesses. Some of the best Mediterranean food in my area started as a guy who had a deal worked out with one of his friends to use a restaurant he owned during Covid to operate his restaurant out of
Starting a restaurant is extremely expensive. There’s a reason 60% of them close in the first year. Ghost kitchens are a fraction of the price. Not a perfect set up, but good if you don’t want to bankrupt yourself and experiment with a new concept.
I run a ghost kitchen. I rent a small space and have been delivering food for over a year. Every single point brought up in this video is nonsense and looking for problems. The whole allergen things is nonsense and commercial kitchens at scale avoid issue consistently without concern.
@614Amsterdam Yeah, if there’s a method to gain cheap entry into an industry, it will *always* be co-opted by corporations no matter how accurately its aimed at local businesses. Hence why corporations are always the ones arguing for less regulations to “support local businesses.”
These things always start with noble intentions that get exploited for the detriment of customers and small business⌠capitalism doing what it does!
I once ordered from this restaurant that was well known in the area and I tried as a kid and loved so I wanted to try them again. But at some point they decided to become a Ghost kitchen and when I went to pick up my order around half of what I ordered wasnât in the bag. And I found out that there were 4 guys in the back âfulfillingâ orders for around 10+ different restaurants and their own in-house guests.
They actually just closed down a couple weeks ago. Honestly shows that this concept is really tainting the dining experience.
The concept is really baffling to me, because if they legitimately like your food, youre splitting up your customer base 10 to 40 fold
As someone with allergies, the lack of health inspections terrifies me. I always triple check menus and allergen lists before ordering, but the lack of inspection completely throws that out the door. I usually only order from two restaurants I trust and I suppose Iâll keep it that way.
I dont wanna scare you, i worked in different restaurans and the risk of cross contamination is real, usually people are careful while preparing meals for people with allergies but, theres always a risk because theyre prepared in the same kitchen, and i mean a real risk, not just my opinion, so i cant imagine these ghost kitchens, they cant even prepare regular meals properly, if i had allergies i would not risk it on deliveries, period.
This video made me love holographic meatloaf again.
I actually just started working at IHOP a couple weeks ago and had never heard of ghost kitchens before. What’s even more wild about these kitchens is that even as an employee I can’t order the ghost kitchen food in person, I would have to pay Doordash for the delivery fees. Like, I see the food right there. Give me some waffle fries.
@Ryan Robot I meant it in the sense that lots of poor people and southern immigrants are forced to take kitchen positions like this, and many of those people are routinely mistreated and abused with no recourse.
This is also the same in the construction industry and what amounts to slave labor in farms in Texas.
@RaeIsGae no it’s nothing like an actual sweat shop, don’t say that working a normal job at IHOP is the same as being a borderline slave in a third world country.
@Andrew Gomes Literal sweatshops. Gotta love Capitalism, I guess.
@Charlie Scott LMFAO i did this at dennyâs
so glad you made a video on this. i ordered from this cool new restaurant âitâs just wingsâ last year and, as you mentioned, was driving in circles in a strip mall around a Chiliâs looking for a non-existent restaurant, I was already incredibly angry upon realizing I spent $15 on CHILIS WINGS, but that was nothing compared to getting home and eating a mushy soggy wing that later uncovered a blob of pink, translucent, bloody mess, I opened every single wing, and every wing was completely raw in the middle, not slightly undercookedâ RAW. I ended up with an intense stomach ache and a few trips to the bathroom, it was only one wing as I scarfed it down in a ravenous state, but it was enough to make me sick. almost wish it would have been enough to give me a reason to apply some real pressure to that shady ass business.
@Hay I am a money hungry American and I second that op should take legal action
You can literally sue for that, Iâm not even a money hungry American. Thatâs a legitimate problem.
As someone who lives in an extremely rural area (we donât have any chain restaurants in my whole COUNTY), I canât get delivery from anywhere, even the small local restaurants. Delivery has always been a foreign concept to me since I only ever got it in college but I know how popular it is in bigger areas. Iâd never even heard of ghost kitchens till this video, thanks for a great and informative video!
At first I was like, “Wow, Eddy publicly reported back on his failed focus group–that’s some integrity” esp considering most research journals tend to favour positive outcomes in studies over ones that fail to do what was expected. What came afterwards was even more impressive. This was a bold video and I’m glad it came from the guy who begrudgingly ate at every Rainforest Cafe in North America (my first video!)