Could see the kitchen areas through a window and they weren't necessarily dirty, but looked sketchy for some reason. Few people, robots delivering orders, one set of cooks making the food. Just dystopian.
We might as well just build ready to eat food factories that pipe the slop directly into your house. We got rid of the "inconvenience" of going out to eat and enjoying a restaurant. Why not get rid of the pesky delivery middle-man too?
[–] brookst 14 hours ago
[–] SoftTalker 14 hours ago
[–] quickthrowman 11 hours ago
[–] ssl-3 7 hours ago
It can be easier to rebrand a ghost kitchen than to rejigger a restaurant to do other things, though. For instance: The decor doesn't even exist, much less match a certain theme.
A ghost kitchen can also do many things at once that would not traditionally fit together in a single restaurant.
I think that might be part of what some find off-putting, but there's no conceptual reason why the same location can't make awesome New Haven wood-fired pizzas, Texas smoked beef ribs, and Philly cheesesteak sandwiches on the same day. It can work as long as the volume supports each of them well-enough that they can retain workers who are able to master these things well-enough to keep a good reputation going.
It's just a building with a kitchen, and that kitchen does not have a size limit. It can do many styles of cooking at once.
And when compared to having several different sit-down restaurants to operate, management can be more-centralized while also keeping them closer to the work. This can improve quality and reduce costs.
(That doesn't make me a fan of the idea. I'd rather go to a restaurant and sit down than have anything delivered, aside from things that travel well. Pizza, BBQ, and cold subs can travel extremely well, for instance, while french fries and burgers usually turn into sadness in minutes. But other people want whatever they want and that's fine too.)
[–] Marsymars 5 hours ago
(And at that, one my biggest complaints of Google Maps is that the reviewers are undiscerning and/or fake compared to what Urbanspoon had before it died.)
[–] ssl-3 1 hour ago
But do the reviews of a ghost kitchen differ in these ways compared to a sit-down restaurant? If not, then: They each have the same reputation to build and uphold -- whatever that reputation is worth.
And the DD-specific kitchen I know is basically just a typical restaurant kitchen minus attached dining. You can make slop in an industrial park, you can make slop in a real restaurant (I’ve certainly experienced that).
Why in the world would it be necessary to have dining tables for a kitchen to make good food?