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Tim Fulton 00:08
Welcome to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. We are a weekly Columbus centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I’m your host Tim Fulton. If you’re ordering food on the delivery app, you may not know precisely where your dinner came from. Columbus underground Associate Editor Susan post went down the rabbit hole of ghost kitchens and virtual brands in the restaurant industry. In today’s episode, we explore the burgeoning scene of ghost kitchens in Columbus, unraveling their advantages, and the complex challenges they bring to the table. But it’s not all about convenience. We’ll discuss the transparency issues these virtual brands pose, how they can be misleading to customers, and the implications for food origin disclosure. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast.com. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Susan post, the associated er of Columbus underground and Metro printer. Susan, how are you?
Susan Post 01:22
I’m great. How are you? Tim?
Tim Fulton 01:23
I’m good. We are here talking. We’re trying to be a little timely. With our podcast today. We’re talking about ghost kitchens. We anticipate this is going to be coming out right before Thanksgiving
Susan Post 01:35
should have done it on Halloween.
Tim Fulton 01:38
Yes, indeed. Are ghosts real? First of all, tell us you say you did a piece a long piece for Columbus underground. Yes. About ghost kitchens, how they permeated in Columbus, what they are, why you did this? What are the benefits? What are the drawbacks? So let’s get into it. First of all, what is a ghost kitchen? Okay,
Susan Post 02:00
so there are a couple of definitions that people typically use for Ghost kitchen. I typically see a ghost kitchen as like a large commercial kitchen facility that has like lots of little individual kitchen bays. In it that primarily caters to delivery and pickup brands, but can also be utilized by like food trucks, caterers, other food based businesses. There are a couple of examples of that in Columbus. There’s the cloud kitchen facility called the Columbus food hall over on Essex Avenue. And then there’s a newer facility in Clintonville, called High Street kitchens that just opened up on High Street from Maker kitchens. And this
Tim Fulton 02:41
is category so long, longtime listeners will be familiar with E CDI. And they’re like, Yeah, commercial kitchen food for the food for it. That is different. That is different primarily for businesses that are
Susan Post 02:55
they primarily serve food trucks that use that space is like prep and stuff like that. So yeah, got it different from that. And then some folks also called Ghost kitchens. Restaurants are brands that are operating out of existing restaurants. So for example, the Bukit Evapo, over in the arena district, if you zoom in on that on Uber Eats or DoorDash or whatever, there’s Buka, but then there’s also three or four other brands that are operating out of that same kitchen. So some people call that a ghost kitchen, which also brings me to virtual brands, which kind of goes hand in hand with all this and you can’t really discuss one without the other. Okay. And those are brands that exist, like solely in the confines of the internet. And I think, you know, one of the most well known examples is probably Mr. Beast burger. Okay. So he launched during the pandemic, launched 300 locations, and all in one day, which is absolutely unheard of in you know, restaurant world. And
Tim Fulton 03:55
for those that aren’t familiar, and frankly, I just became familiar with Mr. Beast three weeks ago, maybe he this is a very famous Youtuber, very popular YouTuber, and based on your article lent his name to this chain of burger like this burger franchise, he
Susan Post 04:12
partnered with this business or this organization called virtual dining concepts, okay. And so they create these virtual brands, a lot of them have kind of like pop culture, celebrity references, so they kind of create these menus and these brands standards and everything that then they dispatch out to other existing restaurant kitchens. Okay, so So
Tim Fulton 04:34
Mr. B’s burger could be produced and in fact is according to your article produced by like Red Robin. Yeah. And it is an Am I getting that right?
Susan Post 04:43
Right. Robin has its own virtual brands. So what it did is it segmented out its menu so it took all of its like salads and chicken sandwiches and kind of siphon it off into this other brand called Fresh set. Okay. So it all just kind of keeps compounding on each other because it’s like there’s this example and that example. And yeah,
Tim Fulton 05:03
so let’s walk through it real quick in terms of, I guess I want to take the perspective of I own a restaurant with a pretty with a fairly expansive menu. The suggestion would be for them based on an again, this is all from your article. Like, hey, if you want to generate more business, yes, you should have your pre existing menu. All in one spot under your previous let’s just call it Tim’s restaurant. Tim’s restaurant has all of these things. But also let’s say Tim’s restaurant offers pizza. There should be a Tim’s pizza. Exactly. And there should be a Tim’s chicken wings. Yep. And there should be Tim’s salads.
Susan Post 05:51
Yeah, so platforms like DoorDash. And Uber Eats, they’re like encouraging this for restaurants to say, hey, here’s your main menu, but, you know, break it out into three or four other brands. So and it you know, there’s DoorDash kind of even said in some of their literature, you know, it’s like having a product in a grocery store displayed on two or three shelves instead of one. Okay, so they’re just trying to get you to kind of up your search results when people hop on at their delivery, third party delivery platform looking for a burger or pizza or whatever.
Tim Fulton 06:22
I guess from a business perspective to I’m thinking about what okay, what’s the benefit to the apps, and it is, from a consumer perspective, oh, there’s so many different places I can order from, it’s not just, Hey, we’ve got, you know, we’ve got Pizza Hut, and we’ve got Wendy’s and we’ve got like these for other mediocre things. They’ve also got these things I’ve never heard of.
Susan Post 06:47
Yeah, and I mean, that can be a little bit of a double edged sword because customers don’t like getting duped. And you saw a lot of this during the pandemic. And I think one of the most prevalent examples was people were getting on DoorDash. And Uber Eats and ordering Pasquale pizza and wings. And they found out it was Chuckie Cheese, and they were upset. And you know, so especially, I think a lot of this, it was starting to happen before the pandemic, that a pandemic really kind of spurred a lot of growth in this area, because, you know, restaurants had to find some way to survive. Yeah. But and so platforms have kind of tried to build in a little bit more transparency in these virtual brands. But it can be really easy to like order from a place you’ve already ordered from without realizing it. With going back to that kind of fresh set, fresh set, red Ramat example. You know, if I get on there, and I see a salad from fresh set that I want to order, and I order it, and I don’t like it, you know, then I’m on there again. And next year, Red Robin has a salad and I want to be like, oh, gotta have that salad. And I order it. And it’s the same thing, right? So it’s kind of a little too easy to end up ordering something you don’t enjoy over again, in my opinion, if you’re not being careful and really paying attention to where you’re ordering from.
Tim Fulton 08:10
And is that the primary concern for the customer? Do you think of like, I have certainly had negative experiences on DoorDash, or with a certain like, and it’s normally a chain, right? That it’s like, oh, I got this. I don’t want to disparage any restaurants, but like, oh, this just wasn’t good. And the prep was rushed and like, Oh, I’m not going to order from there again. But if I’m presented with something that frankly, I know, I want, for example, chicken wings again, it’s like, oh, I’m being presented with this different option. That’s actually not a different option.
Susan Post 08:46
Yeah. So I think that’s part of it. And I also think there’s just kind of the transparency aspect of like people wanting to know where their food is coming from. You know, and if you look closely, it’s typically like real small at the bottom of a listing on a third party delivery service like this brand is part of whatever restaurant but you don’t scroll down and see that
Tim Fulton 09:07
but there tend to be disclosure you’re saying there is it’s normally
Susan Post 09:11
not like super prevalent but it’s there and that’s kind of what I was saying is you know, at the start of the pandemic is sort of the wild west but you know, as this has been going on for a little longer there are a few more I would say built in none of protections were the right word, but like more transparency into what is and isn’t a virtual brand and there used to be it
Tim Fulton 09:30
feels very similar and we will not go down the legal rabbit hole here. But it feels very similar to Fulfilled by Amazon, right? That like I think I’m buying from Amazon and Amazon is delivering it to me, but it is just something that somebody shipped to Amazon that Amazon then ships back to me and the the sorry, I guess I am going to go down the legal rabbit hole that the liability for that product does not rest with Amazon It rests on the person who initially sent it in. Interesting. And guess what, if you want, let’s say, let’s choose a terrible example, an electric bike that like burns down your garage, you would much rather Sue Amazon than you would sue a Chinese manufacturer who’s never going to show up in the courtroom in the first place. Yeah. And so what you’re saying is like, for the most part, we’re seeing that there are some disclosures being made. It does say, hey, heads up fulfilled by Red Robin. Yeah, but it’s the fine print. Yes.
Susan Post 10:33
Well, that makes me think of a really interesting example. So I did speak to Columbus public health during this and the individual I spoke with told me an example of, so say, I owned like a breakfast restaurant, Susan’s breakfast. Having a really busy Saturday morning, you call in an order pancakes, instead of filling that request at the restaurant, I dispatch it to a facility that I have inside a ghost kitchen. Okay, so my, the food that gets delivered to actually comes from that ghost kitchen and not the restaurant. Okay, so he cited an example of seeing that happen sometimes. So I mean, that kind of fits your what you were saying about Amazon is, you know, do you know where it’s coming from? If there’s a problem with the food? Yeah. And you call the restaurant back that food was an actually made there? Yeah. So like, what, what are they going to do about it?
Tim Fulton 11:23
I would like to assume so there’s obviously certifications that restaurants go through. There are certifications that kitchens go through. They are different, first of all, but and and you’d also like to assume that any legitimate business if they are, let’s say, they’re not outsourcing, exactly, they’re like deferring an order to another facility, they are going through
Susan Post 11:50
it. And that’s exactly what we talked about is like, you know, even though you may not see a lot on the consumer side of these ghost kitchens, like each individual kitchen is inspected every time a tenant turns over, they’re supposed to get re inspected. You know, they’re they’re held to the same standards have, you know, restaurants get inspected so many times a year based on their risk level? Yep. So I mean, it is, you know, it’s not just, whatever, no, no oversight in the kitchen. They are inspected. But they, you know, almost public health said they don’t always know what all brands are operating out of what kitchen. Right?
Tim Fulton 12:25
Well, so I guess the question would be, so the natural conclusion to that is, let’s say, I’m having a very hard time just like naming restaurants that don’t exist. But let’s say I order from restaurant a, and I get sick, and I get sick enough that I’m like, dropping a dime on restaurant a. And there’s where’s the chain of custody? Right? Apparently, this is a legal argument now. Where’s it where’s the chain of custody for like, oh, I ordered it from this place? And then somebody’s like, oh, well, it looks like from your email confirmation, it’s actually from this place. And they’re actually not licensed or we don’t, this isn’t somewhere where we have jurisdiction. And so there’s a risk to the customer. Right? Yeah. And
Susan Post 13:15
that’s a great, great question. And I mean, I was looking at, so we did our own little experiment, which I can get into in a minute. But I was trying to find contact info for one of the brands or restaurants that we ordered from, and all I could find was like, a generic number that was from LA. Okay, and, and so it’s like, even if you want to get in touch with, you know, some of these restaurants, it’s probably really difficult. So I guess I can get into my Yeah. So
Tim Fulton 13:45
and the point of the experiment was mostly to, like, verify and explore the different idiosyncrasies of what this model causes? Yes. Got it.
Susan Post 13:55
You know, so this whole idea of kind of exploring ghost kitchens and virtual brands, I mentioned it several times, but kind of started during the pandemic, because, you know, my beat is food restaurants. And so I was gonna keep working to it was a challenge. But um, you know, so seeing all of these new brands and options popping up and I’m like, where is this? Like, I don’t see this on a building. Like, where’s this coming from? And it was, you know, coming out of another restaurants kitchen. So something that we’ve kind of been keeping an eye on and you know, toyed with writing about, and then earlier this year, it was YouTuber Edie barback, who did a really interesting video about kind of like the pitfalls of ghost kitchens. And in that he ordered, I think, nine different fish sandwiches from nine different restaurants. They all shared an address, okay, and so he went to pick them up and there was like, no marking between like which sandwich came from which restaurant, but they all looked and tasted pretty much the same. So we decided to kind of recreate that experiment with a local accent. Apple. So we ordered from the Columbus food hall. And what we did was we ordered two different dishes from two different restaurants. So we did these chicken curry bowls, okay. And they had just slightly different names, okay, from each restaurant and they were different prices. So I think one of them was like $15, and one of them was 1350. Pick them up, they look exactly the same. They taste exactly the same. And so we did it again. And then we got cauliflower wings from two different restaurants, same order, same everything same price. tastes the same. Okay, so even though we ordered from four different places, sensitively, yeah, yeah, it was all the same. So that kind of, you know, just replicated what Eddie Virbac had found in his video. And if you looked at the Columbus Foodhall, specifically, at that time, they were probably at least a half a dozen different restaurants that had some sort of overlap in their menu with bowls and cauliflower wings and healthy options, then it started getting into like, these places that said, like, Fuck gluten, Norfolk carbs, or whatever. And like, there was more menu overlap with those. So you had like 12 different restaurants that all had some sort of shared dishes, right. So they’re very likely coming out of the same kitchen.
Tim Fulton 16:22
Maybe different bags, maybe different packaging, but a lot of times no,
Susan Post 16:27
well, and like all of the packaging, so we had to place for different orders to pick this food up. And you know, each did have a like stapled receipt on the outside, saying what the order was, but the packaging was all the same. There was no kind of indication otherwise, what was coming from what place besides the ticket stapled on the outside?
Tim Fulton 16:47
And so you actually went to cause a lot of these places, if you are selecting because you’re making the determination from the jump. Is this for delivery? Or is this for pickup, but you were able to pick up you went to pickup but a lot of these places they won’t let you pick up like this is meant to be. You don’t want to see behind the curtain. Yeah, yeah.
Susan Post 17:09
So we picked up from the Columbus food hall. And I know that you can pick up from the maker kitchens on High Street as well. But you know, going back to the Red Robin example. So when I was searching on DoorDash, and I zoomed in on Red Robin, when I had pickup selected, only Red Robin was showing up. Okay, when I switched to delivery, and was looking at options, fresh set, and Red Robin were showing up. So there definitely is some, you know, kind of trying to hide.
Tim Fulton 17:42
Yeah, they’re obfuscating what they’re doing. Yeah. And I think at the end of the day, it does go back to customers don’t want to be duped. Right. I’m curious about the pricing, too. But I don’t think we really know. Like, why want like, literally, it’s the same person doing the pricing? Yeah. And why? Maybe one is more of a, an upscale brand. And one is a I just want food in my belly kind of brand. And so it’s
Susan Post 18:11
a great question. And I mean, like, if you look at the article on the site, the front image is a picture of the bowls. And it looks like they’ve got about the same amount of chicken about the same amount of vegetables. So I have no idea.
Tim Fulton 18:23
So there is some additional like, like these places have websites they are they don’t exist solely within DoorDash. Well,
Susan Post 18:33
it depends. Okay, so the interesting thing is, so one of the places that we ordered from it was like Thai curry bowls or something. And I mentioned earlier, I was trying to look up contact info for that place, and it was sending me to a number in LA. And so then I started digging into it further, and I kept matching up addresses of, you know, other locations of this restaurant. And they were all in other cloud kitchen facilities. Okay, cloud kitchens is just very interesting, because they are very, very secretive of what they’re doing. I mentioned in the article that I was having trouble getting anyone from Cloud kitchens, or that worked out of cloud kitchens to talk to me. In right after the article published, I had an individual that said they had worked in a cloud kitchen facility reached out to me and say the reason you’re not hearing from anyone is because everyone has to sign NDAs or non disclosure agreements. Yeah. And so looked into that a little further, and like seeing that in a lot of places and a lot of other articles that Travis Kalanick, who was at Uber, and then was ousted and founded this cloud kitchens, he’s very, very secretive. He doesn’t even want his employees putting that they work there on LinkedIn. Okay, so just kind of a lot of shrouded mystery around the facilities. But it’s kind of seeming like they have a lot of these sort of in house virtual brands that they’re encouraging people that are working out of their facilities to use
Tim Fulton 19:56
and so is it. I’m sorry, what’s the name of the place on SX? Cloud kitchens, cloud kitchens, not only allows folks to work out of it with their brands, but they also have their own in house brands that they’re replicating that they’re putting on the apps using these third party platforms to basically be the, the road the path to their food.
Susan Post 20:20
Yeah. And that’s, that’s what it’s seeming like, okay. Yeah. I mean, is it all that? No. And I mean, that’s, that’s kind of what’s interesting is like, if you look at the listing on their website, it does seem like there are some, like, genuinely local mom and pop brands that operate operate out of these facilities, and they get a lot of benefits for those types of types of businesses. But in my opinion, it kind of gets lost in the noise of all of the other six to 10 brands that look exactly the same. Yeah, it’s hard to sort through it and pick out that one thing that’s like, oh, okay, I think this is actually, you know, people from Columbus just trying to do their thing. Yeah,
Tim Fulton 21:00
well, in my head, it goes to, I’ve been doing a little bit of work in the E commerce space, and how easy it is to just very quickly design a t shirt very quickly throw it on a print on demand service, link that up with your Shopify store, and all you have to do is basically pay your $10 a month subscription to these various services. And oh, look, I’ve got a clothing brand. Yep. Right. And it’s not like, it’s not the nicest stuff, it’s not homage, but like, it’s, it’s good enough to do a funny t shirt. When
Susan Post 21:33
kind of talked about that in the article with the Ohio Restaurant Association. Again, during the pandemic, this really ramped up and you had lots of people just kind of throwing together, these virtual brands, you know, and a lot of them then subsequently went away really quickly, because it is more complicated than you think, you know, we’re talking about a lot of restaurants thought, oh, you know, I serve burgers already. What’s the difference if it’s to a customer, sitting in the restaurant, or putting in a box to go where there’s actually like, a lot of things you have to think about, and it’s, you know, food temps, holding times, you know, what you’re gonna deliver your food and how you’re going to communicate with the drivers. So it is, you know, there’s a lot more to it than I think a lot of restaurants realized. And so you saw a lot come and then a lot go. And, you know, we were kind of talking about how things I think are gonna get to sort of this even out point where the bad ones are gonna go away. Yeah. Well, with any industry.
Tim Fulton 22:25
Yeah. When there is a boom, there tends to be like a culling of the field. And it’s interesting, just to try to bring it back a little bit more to the Columbus perspective. Folks like Northstar brassica, like they they aren’t on those apps. But they do a very hefty takeout game. Yeah, right. And nice. takeout containers are not cheap. As somebody who’s had to purchase them. Yeah. And they’re, yeah, they’re not easy to store. Like it’s a whole lot of space. Exactly. Yeah. It’s an entirely other logistical problem that out of necessity, like a pandemic, you may have to solve it. Yeah. But it’s, it’s just, it’s a very interesting perspective. But like, let’s say I owned a bear burger type restaurant, that, you know, I’ve got 15 Different burgers. Why wouldn’t I sub sect my brand, so that if somebody is on there and searches vegan, and they see bear burger, they’re gonna be like, That’s not I’m moving past that. But if they see leafy patties, yeah, as an option, they’re like, Oh, what’s that? Oh, it’s just vegan burgers. I want that.
Susan Post 23:44
And that’s exactly what we’re talking about earlier and Mikey’s Mikey’s late night slice actually did something like that during the pandemic, okay? Where they, they already had some vegan options, but they sectioned it off into this brand called high horse vegan, and ran that for a while and, you know, talk to Mikey and he kind of talked about how it helped acquire their new customers because people didn’t know they had vegan options. And you know, so that was kind of a really big benefit for them as it helped, you know, help vegan folks know that they could eat there. Yep. And they kept it going for a while and he said, they shut it down probably about a year and a half ago now because it just wasn’t generating enough the necessity, revenue, right. But yeah, but now they’ve acquired all these new customers that didn’t know that they had vegan options. So I mean, and that’s, that can be a benefit of Yeah, segmenting out I guess it just, in my opinion, you know, as I was doing this article, and looking on things like it was just so overwhelming. Yeah. If I searched like, something basic, like pizza or burger or chicken tenders, there’s just literally like hundreds if not like 1000 options. Yeah. So it’s like, at what point do you just be like, forget this, you know, I give up or you just stick to your favorite because you know, you like it’s kind of when does it start to become this diminishing return of like There are so many options that and I
Tim Fulton 25:02
think diminishing returns right? I think that you and this is another like, here’s how I think about it in my, in my day job is everybody says like, oh threads is here. Now we all need to be on threads. And I’m like, do you really want another caffeine?
Susan Post 25:17
Like, pay attention to? Yeah, the
Tim Fulton 25:19
adage I always use is you can have as many cats as you want. But you have to feed every single one of them. And like the argument about whether a restaurant should be on Snapchat is a legitimate argument, or excuse me a legitimate discussion to have. But the answer is probably not. Yeah, like it’s not what is it benefiting you? What’s the virtue in? That’s a
Susan Post 25:43
great question. And I mean, it’s ultimately up to the individual restaurant, what their capacity is, and if they can have these multiple brands going at the same time and yeah,
Tim Fulton 25:51
yeah, I guess I think that like Mikey’s did it right. Shout out, Mikey.
Susan Post 25:58
They tried it.
Tim Fulton 25:58
They went to get out. Yeah, well, they did it. But they did it for a reason that wasn’t specifically misleading. It was just to showcase these options. And it wasn’t to like hoodwink people who are like, I didn’t like the pizza that one time. So I’m gonna go to this high horse pizza, in order to basically mislead them so that they get that get a repeat customer that they shouldn’t have.
Susan Post 26:24
Yeah. What do you think he said, they only ever really tried it because of the pandemic, you know, so it might not have been something they would have done otherwise.
Tim Fulton 26:31
Yeah. And I would encourage anybody to go and read the article there. It goes in depth about some other things. We don’t necessarily have much time for here, like quality control issues, and legal, more legal representation of names. But I want to wrap up today, you get a special question. partly by virtue of your role, and partly by virtue of when this coming out. Susan, what are you thankful for?
Susan Post 26:58
I am thankful for I’m thankful for my job that I get to do stuff like this. I celebrated 10 years over the summer, which is a really exciting milestone, and it’s it’s been 10 fast and fun years. And I also have to say, I’m thankful for my husband. We’ve just had a great year and have some fun holiday travel planned and I’m really looking forward to it.
Tim Fulton 27:18
What do you what do you not so thankful for? Ooh,
Susan Post 27:21
that it’s cold outside. Okay. Not into it not ready.
Tim Fulton 27:25
That’s Susan, thank you for your time today. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluence cast.com. Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of The confluence cast with your friends, family contacts, enemies, your favorite gig worker. If you’re interested in sponsoring the confluence cast get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info at the confluence cast.com Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson, our producers Phil Cogley, I’m your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.
