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Guy Fieri opened up a pop-up restaurant in my town, only available via Grubhub or Seamless or whatever, and my family wanted to try it out. I'm not a Guy Fieri

Guy Fieri opened up a pop-up restaurant in my town, only available via Grubhub or Seamless or whatever, and my family wanted to try it out. I'm not a Guy Fieri fan so I wasn't expecting much, but at the very least I was expecting moderately good food. What we got was something you would see at a high school cafeteria, and I'm not exaggerating. It was nearly inedible, so bad that some members of my family felt compelled to write a letter to Guy Fieri's company.

perfectlyfriedb 4y ago
This has been my experience with every cloud kitchen "brand" I've dared to try (because it was late and they're usually the only ones still open.) I think fundamentally the concept just doesn't attract the right kind of business owners. To open a restaurant of your own you must, on some level I assume, be interested in cooking or cuisine. Cloud kitchens as a concept seemed like they were marketed more to investor/vc types as a vertical to invest in. Typically this group would have gravitated towards franchise ownership where some other corporate entity has figure out the "food" part of the equation. It may not be the most healthy or even the best but they take care of making something palatable and most importantly consistent.
tacostakohashi 4y ago
> Guy Fieri opened up a pop-up restaurant in my town Translation: Some anonymous people that know more about spreadsheets than cooking decided to open a business in my town. They realized that making decent food is a slow and expensive way to build a brand recognition, so they entered into a licensing agreement with Guy Fieri instead.
- trynewideas 4y ago
  Not anonymous, and that's important. It's Virtual Dining Concepts,[1] who also did the Mr. Beast[2] ghost pop-up, the Barstool Sports ghost pop-up, and the Cake Boss spinoff ghost pop-up, and Steve Harvey's ghost pop-up, and the Kitchen: Impossible ghost pop-up, and Mariah Carey's ghost pop-up cookie shop, and the Five Nights at Freddy's ghost pop-up.[3] Their next step after Fieri was mass-licensing TikTokers and giving them restaurants. Their co-founder is Robbie Earl, one of the OGs of licensed restaurant chaining - he's a co-founder and still CEO of Planet Hollywood, who's using this trend to prop up some of his other restaurant properties. For instance, some of the Guy Fieri restaurants are run out of Buca di Beppo restaurant kitchens. I'll give you one guess who's chairman of Buca di Beppo. [1] https://www.foodandwine.com/news/guy-fieri-flavortown-kitchen-delivery-ghost-kitchens https://www.foodandwine.com/news/guy-fieri-flavortown-kitche... [2] https://www.foodandwine.com/news/tiktok-recipes-delivery-restaurant https://www.foodandwine.com/news/tiktok-recipes-delivery-res... [3] https://joinvdc.com/brands/ https://joinvdc.com/brands/
- samstave 4y ago
  A person very close to me is pretty darn senior at The French Laundry. Arguably the best restaurant in the world for a long time (yes it spawned a whole bunch of other restaurants...) But I have some pretty intimate knowledge about their business, and let me tell you - even though TFL knows a ton about cooking. Their payment to the employees and whatnot is not so great. For example, one of the things they do is put "Service is included" on their menus and such, which gives the customer the impression that tip is include. So imagine serving a table that spends $50,000 (yes this is common) on dinner -- and they dont leave a tip, and the servers are making $12 per hour. Seriously - this happens all the time.
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    > For example, one of the things they do is put "Service is included" on their menus and such, which gives the customer the impression that tip is include. Did they just translate a european menu without thinking about what it means? Because that customer's impression would be the correct interpretation.
  - ballenf 4y ago
    So who was hurt in that scenario? Seems ok unless the servers were mislead during hiring.
    - samstave 4y ago
      https://i.imgur.com/t2P8jJG.png https://i.imgur.com/t2P8jJG.png
  - sizzle 4y ago
    What’s the best things on their menu?
    - samstave 4y ago
      Oysters and Pearls. And yes this is not a euphemism.
citizenpaul 4y ago
How would a pop up restaurant have local connections for high quality ingredients? Spoiler: they don't. They use Sysco. A company that specialized in cafeteria grade food anywhere, anytime, cheap as the dirt it is made from.. FYI if you see a Sysco brand truck at a restaurant it means you should never eat there, just go to mcdonalds as its the same quality.
- mod 4y ago
  I own a bar and restaurant and while we don't use Sysco, we totally would for some items. You know, frying oil, canned soda. Maybe glassware, knives. Toilet paper, napkins, baskets, ladles, ticket books. Flour, sugar, salt, pepper. Bleach, oven cleaner, simple green, sponges, bar towels. I'm just getting started, and none of that is really food. We drive ourselves to buy meat and produce. Getting all that shit into the building is a full time job. It's nice to outsource (some) of it to a truck. We're lucky to have a local old school warehouse literally next door. They have computers that run dos on green monochrome screens and print on that wide, green-lined paper from the 80s. We use them instead of a truck, but the concept is identical.

perfectlyfriedb 4y ago

This has been my experience with every cloud kitchen "brand" I've dared to try (because it was late and they're usually the only ones still open.) I think fundamentally the concept just doesn't attract the right kind of business owners. To open a restaurant of your own you must, on some level I assume, be interested in cooking or cuisine. Cloud kitchens as a concept seemed like they were marketed more to investor/vc types as a vertical to invest in. Typically this group would have gravitated towards franchise ownership where some other corporate entity has figure out the "food" part of the equation. It may not be the most healthy or even the best but they take care of making something palatable and most importantly consistent.

tacostakohashi 4y ago

> Guy Fieri opened up a pop-up restaurant in my town Translation: Some anonymous people that know more about spreadsheets than cooking decided to open a business in my town. They realized that making decent food is a slow and expensive way to build a brand recognition, so they entered into a licensing agreement with Guy Fieri instead.

trynewideas 4y ago
Not anonymous, and that's important. It's Virtual Dining Concepts,[1] who also did the Mr. Beast[2] ghost pop-up, the Barstool Sports ghost pop-up, and the Cake Boss spinoff ghost pop-up, and Steve Harvey's ghost pop-up, and the Kitchen: Impossible ghost pop-up, and Mariah Carey's ghost pop-up cookie shop, and the Five Nights at Freddy's ghost pop-up.[3] Their next step after Fieri was mass-licensing TikTokers and giving them restaurants. Their co-founder is Robbie Earl, one of the OGs of licensed restaurant chaining - he's a co-founder and still CEO of Planet Hollywood, who's using this trend to prop up some of his other restaurant properties. For instance, some of the Guy Fieri restaurants are run out of Buca di Beppo restaurant kitchens. I'll give you one guess who's chairman of Buca di Beppo. [1] https://www.foodandwine.com/news/guy-fieri-flavortown-kitchen-delivery-ghost-kitchens https://www.foodandwine.com/news/guy-fieri-flavortown-kitche... [2] https://www.foodandwine.com/news/tiktok-recipes-delivery-restaurant https://www.foodandwine.com/news/tiktok-recipes-delivery-res... [3] https://joinvdc.com/brands/ https://joinvdc.com/brands/
samstave 4y ago
A person very close to me is pretty darn senior at The French Laundry. Arguably the best restaurant in the world for a long time (yes it spawned a whole bunch of other restaurants...) But I have some pretty intimate knowledge about their business, and let me tell you - even though TFL knows a ton about cooking. Their payment to the employees and whatnot is not so great. For example, one of the things they do is put "Service is included" on their menus and such, which gives the customer the impression that tip is include. So imagine serving a table that spends $50,000 (yes this is common) on dinner -- and they dont leave a tip, and the servers are making $12 per hour. Seriously - this happens all the time.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  > For example, one of the things they do is put "Service is included" on their menus and such, which gives the customer the impression that tip is include. Did they just translate a european menu without thinking about what it means? Because that customer's impression would be the correct interpretation.
- ballenf 4y ago
  So who was hurt in that scenario? Seems ok unless the servers were mislead during hiring.
  - samstave 4y ago
    https://i.imgur.com/t2P8jJG.png https://i.imgur.com/t2P8jJG.png
- sizzle 4y ago
  What’s the best things on their menu?
  - samstave 4y ago
    Oysters and Pearls. And yes this is not a euphemism.

citizenpaul 4y ago

How would a pop up restaurant have local connections for high quality ingredients? Spoiler: they don't. They use Sysco. A company that specialized in cafeteria grade food anywhere, anytime, cheap as the dirt it is made from.. FYI if you see a Sysco brand truck at a restaurant it means you should never eat there, just go to mcdonalds as its the same quality.

mod 4y ago
I own a bar and restaurant and while we don't use Sysco, we totally would for some items. You know, frying oil, canned soda. Maybe glassware, knives. Toilet paper, napkins, baskets, ladles, ticket books. Flour, sugar, salt, pepper. Bleach, oven cleaner, simple green, sponges, bar towels. I'm just getting started, and none of that is really food. We drive ourselves to buy meat and produce. Getting all that shit into the building is a full time job. It's nice to outsource (some) of it to a truck. We're lucky to have a local old school warehouse literally next door. They have computers that run dos on green monochrome screens and print on that wide, green-lined paper from the 80s. We use them instead of a truck, but the concept is identical.