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had an experience this spring with picking up Thai food from a Chinese restaurant which is also home to: - Chinese Yum! Yum! - Szechwings - Kuri Sashimi

had an experience this spring with picking up Thai food from a Chinese restaurant which is also home to: - Chinese Yum! Yum! - Szechwings - Kuri Sashimi Bowls - Send Noods Pho - Veggie Stir Fry House - Sushi Sendai - Panang Panang! Thai Curry - Save the Fish Vegetarian Sushi - Fire Ass Thai and so on. at least 25 restaurants by my count. I don't know if I believe that this is a problem (beyond the usual kinds of problems in restaurants) and I'm mostly curious about how the logistics are managed. is there a wall of iPads so each "restaurant" front gets all its own orders on one? does whatever company that facilitates this kind of thing provide a solution where manifold orders can come in on a more traditional kitchen display system with some flag added for which "restaurant" it belongs to? making the various menus work doesn't seem like as big of a challenge: the majority of the client restaurants are offering whole subsets of the host restaurant's menu or food easily reconstructed from those items.

pjc50 6y ago
White label food. It does rather defeat Yelp or other attempts at reviews if "restaurants" can be spun up and down like AWS VMs. I suppose the limit case would be personalised restaurants, where everyone thinks they're ordering from a slightly different customised-for-them place but which all come from the same kitchen. I guess the parasocial relationships are the next thing to automate?
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  > White label food. Already had those -- the frozen-grill trend of the 90s, aka the TGIFridays, Bennigan's, Applebees, etc. With COVID they just ditched sit-down part and went straight to delivery.
hahamrfunnyguy 6y ago
It's funny you say that because making the various menu items seems like the biggest challenge in my view. In my experience, a restaurant with a large menu is a sure sign of mediocre food. It's like when you order Thai cuisine at a Chinese restaurant - you end up getting sweet and spicy Chinese food. When you have so many menu items, how do you ensure consistency and train cooks how to prepare the recipes?
- mathattack 6y ago
  The long term answer is likely automation. (Same answer as Lyft and Uber) My guess is short term it’s a matter of checklists with largely common underlying ingredients. Or perhaps everything is prepackaged and unfrozen upon order. (The larger the menu, the more likely the former)
  - matthewdgreen 6y ago
    We already have this automation. You can find it in the pre-packaged entrees section of your grocery store’s freezer aisle. The problem is that outside of a few limited categories, most people find frozen pre-prepared food to be unsatisfactory when compared to fresh food. So the concern is that automation may just mean “supermarket-quality food becomes the norm, while all the real restaurants go out of business”.
    - mixedCase 6y ago
      So that would mean people prefer lower quality food for lower prices over mid-to-high quality food at higher prices, and society gets what it wants. Win-win. If there's demand for higher quality food, then I'm confident the doomsday scenario of "all the real restaurants go out of business" is not going to happen. We just might have to wait a little longer for delivery or travel a few more minutes to get to such a place.
      - matthewdgreen 6y ago
        If you think that "people prefer lower quality food for lower prices" == "society gets what it wants, win-win", I suggest you take a look at any 1970s cookbook. This country spent years wiping out local bakeries and butchers and replacing them with factory foods. It was a dire time, and we're lucky today to have so many better options. This Twitter account gives you a fun look at what we don't have to deal with anymore, thank god: https://twitter.com/70s_party?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor https://twitter.com/70s_party?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcam... ETA: In case this isn't clear, what I'm trying to say is that sometimes powerful economic forces can provide us with deeply suboptimal results. It would be an objectively bad thing if every good pizza place in my city went out of business and got replaced with Freschetta. But it really could happen.
fnord123 6y ago
>is there a wall of iPads so each "restaurant" front gets all its own orders on one? does whatever company that facilitates this kind of thing provide a solution where manifold orders can come in on a more traditional kitchen display system with some flag added for which "restaurant" it belongs to? The latter. Chowly, Deliverect, etc are solutions to manage the plethera of tablets.
- joe5150 6y ago
  interesting!
cafard 6y ago
Forty-odd years ago, one saw in Denver establishments calling themselves "Italian/Mexican" restaurants. I understood this to mean "lots of tomato sauce, with degrees of heat." I did not bother to try any of them.
JacobDotVI 6y ago
Sysco and US Foods already offer dishes for restaurants to white label. These establishments are just pulling those multi-restaurant offerings from the distributor to the retailer https://www.sysco.com/Products/Products/Product-Categories.html https://www.sysco.com/Products/Products/Product-Categories.h... https://www.usfoods.com/great-food.html https://www.usfoods.com/great-food.html
treis 6y ago
>I don't know if I believe that this is a problem It's just another one of the ways life is getting a tiny bit harder. Before if "Fire Ass Thai" sucked then I won't order from them again and I'd try "Panang Panang! Thai Curry" next time. Now I gotta put the effort into disentangling this web of restaurants to find one that might not suck.

pjc50 6y ago

White label food. It does rather defeat Yelp or other attempts at reviews if "restaurants" can be spun up and down like AWS VMs. I suppose the limit case would be personalised restaurants, where everyone thinks they're ordering from a slightly different customised-for-them place but which all come from the same kitchen. I guess the parasocial relationships are the next thing to automate?

blaser-waffle 6y ago
> White label food. Already had those -- the frozen-grill trend of the 90s, aka the TGIFridays, Bennigan's, Applebees, etc. With COVID they just ditched sit-down part and went straight to delivery.

hahamrfunnyguy 6y ago

It's funny you say that because making the various menu items seems like the biggest challenge in my view. In my experience, a restaurant with a large menu is a sure sign of mediocre food. It's like when you order Thai cuisine at a Chinese restaurant - you end up getting sweet and spicy Chinese food. When you have so many menu items, how do you ensure consistency and train cooks how to prepare the recipes?

mathattack 6y ago
The long term answer is likely automation. (Same answer as Lyft and Uber) My guess is short term it’s a matter of checklists with largely common underlying ingredients. Or perhaps everything is prepackaged and unfrozen upon order. (The larger the menu, the more likely the former)
- matthewdgreen 6y ago
  We already have this automation. You can find it in the pre-packaged entrees section of your grocery store’s freezer aisle. The problem is that outside of a few limited categories, most people find frozen pre-prepared food to be unsatisfactory when compared to fresh food. So the concern is that automation may just mean “supermarket-quality food becomes the norm, while all the real restaurants go out of business”.
  - mixedCase 6y ago
    So that would mean people prefer lower quality food for lower prices over mid-to-high quality food at higher prices, and society gets what it wants. Win-win. If there's demand for higher quality food, then I'm confident the doomsday scenario of "all the real restaurants go out of business" is not going to happen. We just might have to wait a little longer for delivery or travel a few more minutes to get to such a place.
    - matthewdgreen 6y ago
      If you think that "people prefer lower quality food for lower prices" == "society gets what it wants, win-win", I suggest you take a look at any 1970s cookbook. This country spent years wiping out local bakeries and butchers and replacing them with factory foods. It was a dire time, and we're lucky today to have so many better options. This Twitter account gives you a fun look at what we don't have to deal with anymore, thank god: https://twitter.com/70s_party?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor https://twitter.com/70s_party?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcam... ETA: In case this isn't clear, what I'm trying to say is that sometimes powerful economic forces can provide us with deeply suboptimal results. It would be an objectively bad thing if every good pizza place in my city went out of business and got replaced with Freschetta. But it really could happen.

fnord123 6y ago

>is there a wall of iPads so each "restaurant" front gets all its own orders on one? does whatever company that facilitates this kind of thing provide a solution where manifold orders can come in on a more traditional kitchen display system with some flag added for which "restaurant" it belongs to? The latter. Chowly, Deliverect, etc are solutions to manage the plethera of tablets.

joe5150 6y ago
interesting!

cafard 6y ago

Forty-odd years ago, one saw in Denver establishments calling themselves "Italian/Mexican" restaurants. I understood this to mean "lots of tomato sauce, with degrees of heat." I did not bother to try any of them.

JacobDotVI 6y ago

Sysco and US Foods already offer dishes for restaurants to white label. These establishments are just pulling those multi-restaurant offerings from the distributor to the retailer https://www.sysco.com/Products/Products/Product-Categories.html https://www.sysco.com/Products/Products/Product-Categories.h... https://www.usfoods.com/great-food.html https://www.usfoods.com/great-food.html

treis 6y ago

>I don't know if I believe that this is a problem It's just another one of the ways life is getting a tiny bit harder. Before if "Fire Ass Thai" sucked then I won't order from them again and I'd try "Panang Panang! Thai Curry" next time. Now I gotta put the effort into disentangling this web of restaurants to find one that might not suck.