4 ms·

I live in a place where in-person restaurants are an important part of the culture and community. Even when I order food, I want to support those places. I res

I live in a place where in-person restaurants are an important part of the culture and community. Even when I order food, I want to support those places. I respect that operating out of a warehouse might be a way to break into the restaurant business, but it’s also a way to suck money away from more valuable institutions. And I don’t really have the energy to figure out which it is. (And I have had enough shitty experiences with cloud kitchens that frankly I want to avoid all of them.) Around here if you want to pilot a restaurant idea you get a food truck.

chefandy 4y ago
Usually people's motivations for ordering in are entirely different than going out to eat. If their importance was tied to their having neighborhood storefronts, wouldn't their primary competition be other storefront businesses in the neighborhood? Are they not sustainably serving their purpose as such? Why wouldn't you support them in person? Also, ordering using online services probably hits their bottom line harder than any given competing business across town. Food trucks are as or more expensive to run than brick-and-mortar restaurants. Electricity is a lot more expensive coming from a generator, propane is a lot more expensive than natural gas, legally required commissary kitchens are less expensive to rent than brick and mortar restaurants but offer vastly less for what you pay, you can't purchase ingredients in the same quantity or store the same amount of prepped product because of limited storage in a commissary, lack of full-scale dishwashing facilities on the truck means relying on disposables, local laws and tight commissary access logistics might make it impractical or impossible to use unserved food left at the end of the day on your truck, your cooking schedule is tightly constrained by those who share your commissary and might be unpredictable if some of them do event-based business which is murder for planning and labor, your business is tightly coupled to the weather, etc. etc. etc. You're just swapping one set of operating expenses out for another. Not even in the same ballpark as opening a ghost kitchen. A pop-up in another restaurant or unused restaurant space with a profit sharing or rental agreement is the only cheaper way to start out, but it's not sustainable, and at that point, you're pretty damn close to a ghost kitchen, anyway. I think you're aiming your reasonable distaste for corporate entities at indie ghost kitchens when they don't deserve it.
- jjj123 4y ago
  Maybe what we really want is an “independent and locally owned” option on these apps. I’m just as disinterested in corporate ghost kitchen pop ups as I am high end chains that venture capitalists have money in. I’m still with the OP, though, since I think that option would filter out 90% of ghost kitchens.
  - chefandy 4y ago
    It really depends on where you are. About 90% of the ghost kitchens in my city are independently owned because about 95% of the restaurants that offer delivery are independently owned. Also, I've yet to see an actual unbranded corporate pop-up, let alone one that offered delivery. Maybe you mean an alternate menu produced in a corporate restaurant operating under a different brand?
    - jjj123 4y ago
      This could be SF specific, but I mean whatever comes out of CloudKitchens [1] and the like, regardless of whether or not CK calls its ghost restaurants “independent contractors” or “small business owners” or whatever. 1. https://cloudkitchens.com/locations/san-francisco-bay-area https://cloudkitchens.com/locations/san-francisco-bay-area
      - chefandy 4y ago
        Whatever comes out is what... Corporate? The tenants highlighted on that page seem independent. Their copy entirely targets independent small vendors. I've seen one or two franchises operate from them but we're talking single digit percentages. A successful independent restaurant gets a 2 or 3 percent profit margin. Big name restaurants get a lot more than that. They've got a plan, workshopped broadly appealing products, and name recognition that gets butts in seats even in the most competitive, epicurean scenes because they're a known quantity. Many people value comfort and safety over new, fashionable, and refined experiences in their food choices, even occasionally. If a Michelin starred restaurant in the US served a burger at their bar, it would probably be the best selling item they had. If corporations can tack a few new delivery menus onto their existing kitchen for the price of some web consulting, then sure. If it means shedding all the value they've built over the years to do a no-name pop-up located in an office building outsourcing the technical infrastructure they've already built? Not likely. Even for medium sized local restaurant groups it's probably not a great fit unless they already had the big expansion plan in place. I think you're subconsciously reacting to the bland, tech-ish aesthetic these places adopt because their uniform online presence is included in the rent and their branding was done by someone on fiverrrr who wouldn't know the difference between the food scenes in San Francisco and Cheboygan if you funded their yacht, let alone for the $60 they bid on the project.
xenocratus 4y ago
If eat-in restaurants become less viable, they will start to die off until enough are left to bring their viability back up (more people interested in eating per restaurant). We can't keep business open for the sake of the few who want to feel good about them existing, unless they serve a crucial role, which I don't think can be said about restaurants. If people strongly prefer cloud kitchens, there's no economic point to expensive, seat-in restaurants. That being said, the seat-in scene in London seems to be thriving, though I'm curious if the inflation is hitting them (or us, the diners).

chefandy 4y ago

Usually people's motivations for ordering in are entirely different than going out to eat. If their importance was tied to their having neighborhood storefronts, wouldn't their primary competition be other storefront businesses in the neighborhood? Are they not sustainably serving their purpose as such? Why wouldn't you support them in person? Also, ordering using online services probably hits their bottom line harder than any given competing business across town. Food trucks are as or more expensive to run than brick-and-mortar restaurants. Electricity is a lot more expensive coming from a generator, propane is a lot more expensive than natural gas, legally required commissary kitchens are less expensive to rent than brick and mortar restaurants but offer vastly less for what you pay, you can't purchase ingredients in the same quantity or store the same amount of prepped product because of limited storage in a commissary, lack of full-scale dishwashing facilities on the truck means relying on disposables, local laws and tight commissary access logistics might make it impractical or impossible to use unserved food left at the end of the day on your truck, your cooking schedule is tightly constrained by those who share your commissary and might be unpredictable if some of them do event-based business which is murder for planning and labor, your business is tightly coupled to the weather, etc. etc. etc. You're just swapping one set of operating expenses out for another. Not even in the same ballpark as opening a ghost kitchen. A pop-up in another restaurant or unused restaurant space with a profit sharing or rental agreement is the only cheaper way to start out, but it's not sustainable, and at that point, you're pretty damn close to a ghost kitchen, anyway. I think you're aiming your reasonable distaste for corporate entities at indie ghost kitchens when they don't deserve it.

jjj123 4y ago
Maybe what we really want is an “independent and locally owned” option on these apps. I’m just as disinterested in corporate ghost kitchen pop ups as I am high end chains that venture capitalists have money in. I’m still with the OP, though, since I think that option would filter out 90% of ghost kitchens.
- chefandy 4y ago
  It really depends on where you are. About 90% of the ghost kitchens in my city are independently owned because about 95% of the restaurants that offer delivery are independently owned. Also, I've yet to see an actual unbranded corporate pop-up, let alone one that offered delivery. Maybe you mean an alternate menu produced in a corporate restaurant operating under a different brand?
  - jjj123 4y ago
    This could be SF specific, but I mean whatever comes out of CloudKitchens [1] and the like, regardless of whether or not CK calls its ghost restaurants “independent contractors” or “small business owners” or whatever. 1. https://cloudkitchens.com/locations/san-francisco-bay-area https://cloudkitchens.com/locations/san-francisco-bay-area
    - chefandy 4y ago
      Whatever comes out is what... Corporate? The tenants highlighted on that page seem independent. Their copy entirely targets independent small vendors. I've seen one or two franchises operate from them but we're talking single digit percentages. A successful independent restaurant gets a 2 or 3 percent profit margin. Big name restaurants get a lot more than that. They've got a plan, workshopped broadly appealing products, and name recognition that gets butts in seats even in the most competitive, epicurean scenes because they're a known quantity. Many people value comfort and safety over new, fashionable, and refined experiences in their food choices, even occasionally. If a Michelin starred restaurant in the US served a burger at their bar, it would probably be the best selling item they had. If corporations can tack a few new delivery menus onto their existing kitchen for the price of some web consulting, then sure. If it means shedding all the value they've built over the years to do a no-name pop-up located in an office building outsourcing the technical infrastructure they've already built? Not likely. Even for medium sized local restaurant groups it's probably not a great fit unless they already had the big expansion plan in place. I think you're subconsciously reacting to the bland, tech-ish aesthetic these places adopt because their uniform online presence is included in the rent and their branding was done by someone on fiverrrr who wouldn't know the difference between the food scenes in San Francisco and Cheboygan if you funded their yacht, let alone for the $60 they bid on the project.

xenocratus 4y ago

If eat-in restaurants become less viable, they will start to die off until enough are left to bring their viability back up (more people interested in eating per restaurant). We can't keep business open for the sake of the few who want to feel good about them existing, unless they serve a crucial role, which I don't think can be said about restaurants. If people strongly prefer cloud kitchens, there's no economic point to expensive, seat-in restaurants. That being said, the seat-in scene in London seems to be thriving, though I'm curious if the inflation is hitting them (or us, the diners).