Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the show.
Speaker 3: My name is Matt, my name is Noel.
Speaker 4: They call be Ben. We're joined as always with our
Speaker 4: super producer Paul, Mission Control decand most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 4: You are here, and that makes this the stuff they
Speaker 4: don't want you to know. Folks, whether you are listening
Speaker 4: to this at the beginning of your day or the
Speaker 4: end of your day or night, you could probably identify
Speaker 4: with a situation common to everybody. You just got home,
Speaker 4: you did some big stuff, and you're starving, but the
Speaker 4: last thing you want to do is cook. It's like
Speaker 4: a whole other job.
Speaker 3: But Ben, what if I ordered something and had it
Speaker 3: delivered to me waited upon hand and foot, like we
Speaker 3: did during the pandemic? That could continue indefinitely.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, So what would you do in this hypothetical situation?
Speaker 4: And you know, if you're like millions of people every
Speaker 4: year in the US alone, you order delivery. Until pretty recently,
Speaker 4: our options would be fairly limited in this regard but now,
Speaker 4: as we record, there is an entire industry built only
Speaker 4: around bringing your favorite restaurant to your door dot dot
Speaker 4: dot Ellipses for a price. The problem is some of
Speaker 4: these restaurants may not be what they seem. Behold, fellow
Speaker 4: conspiracy realists, the rise of the ghost Kitchen. Here are
Speaker 4: the facts.
Speaker 5: I just want to put it out there. I think
Speaker 5: there's a third option everybody, either cooking your own food,
Speaker 5: ordering out, or option number three cereal Cereal. I just
Speaker 5: remember that being an option quite a bit in college.
Speaker 3: My girlfriend likes to dine on what she calls square snacks,
Speaker 3: which are like cheese slices in the little plastic cellophane,
Speaker 3: and like ritz which is round, or particularly saltines which
Speaker 3: are square. So that's also an option. But it's true,
Speaker 3: Ben Yea.
Speaker 4: The internet calls it girl dinner.
Speaker 3: Girl dinner comes in all shapes and sizes. That's like
Speaker 3: a meme that I haven't quite cracked. It's a meme, Ben,
Speaker 3: you nailed it. This is a thing. And I mentioned
Speaker 3: the pandemic because I think you know, one of the
Speaker 3: pluses of the pandemic, if it can be referred to
Speaker 3: as that, is that we all kind of felt like
Speaker 3: we had this extended vacation, and after a little period
Speaker 3: of time where we weren't completely terrified of touching anything
Speaker 3: from the outside world, ordering in from Uber Eats or
Speaker 3: door Dash or Seamless or Postmates or any number of
Speaker 3: these services kind of became a thing that we relied on,
Speaker 3: and dare I say some of us kind of probably
Speaker 3: figured it more we're into our lives post pandemic than
Speaker 3: we would have if that event had not taken place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean even before the pandemic, Checkers was right. Checkers,
Speaker 4: perhaps the most philosophical of fast food joints in the States,
Speaker 4: said you gotta eat. People have always had to do it.
Speaker 4: Access to food is still one of the guiding factors
Speaker 4: of all human civilization. People love food, and additionally, people
Speaker 4: love convenience even before the pandemic, so it's no surprise
Speaker 4: these two primal drives would intersect. I actually, I was
Speaker 4: talking a little bit with our friends at Station sixteen,
Speaker 4: who have done some excellent social media videos with us.
Speaker 4: They love weird facts, and quite recently we learned that
Speaker 4: the modern roots of food delivery in the West started
Speaker 4: back in the late eighteen hundreds. A pair of Italian
Speaker 4: royals in eighteen eighty nine became the world's first pizza
Speaker 4: delivery customers. So shout out to King Umberto and Queen Margarita.
Speaker 4: Can you guess what kind of pizza they had delivered?
Speaker 3: Uh? Pepperoni?
Speaker 4: Close Margarita, they got a Margarita pizza.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I swear I've seen a pizza chain, If
Speaker 3: not a chain, definitely a handful of one offs called Umberto's.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's a coincidence, you know, me
Speaker 3: and my reaching and grasping etymological straws, but it's certainly possible.
Speaker 4: It's weird though, right because I I, for some reason,
Speaker 4: I was on the fence. I imagined the predecessor of food
Speaker 4: delivery would be much much older or much more recent.
Speaker 4: But turns out eighteen eighty nine and ever since then,
Speaker 4: food and food delivery has sort of mirrored these larger
Speaker 4: historical trends. Wars affect how food is delivered, They affect
Speaker 4: the way food is preserved. Right, and if it weren't
Speaker 4: for Napoleon, we might not have King and food. The
Speaker 4: technological advances, shifting forms of labor rights, and so on,
Speaker 4: they all determine how and when people order stuff to
Speaker 4: eat at home. The most amazing thing happened just a
Speaker 4: year later, in eighteen ninety. Have you guys heard of
Speaker 4: Daba Walla or Daba Vala?
Speaker 2: New to me?
Speaker 3: Yeah? No, new to me too. It's really quickly Humberto's
Speaker 3: pizza chain and New York State and New York City
Speaker 3: like maybe like twelve or thirteen of them. But I
Speaker 3: wasn't just making that up. Tell us about the moment
Speaker 3: by Dabba Walla service. I know about the chai wallas,
Speaker 3: you know, which is a very popular, you know, dispensation
Speaker 3: kind of method of chai tea in train stations and
Speaker 3: that became very sort of a national sort of identity
Speaker 3: factor for India.
Speaker 4: But tell me about the Daba Wallas. Yeah, Dabba Walla
Speaker 4: dates back to eighteen ninety. It's the very first massive
Speaker 4: meal delivery serve, the very first meal delivery system en
Speaker 4: mass and it occurs under British colonialism in India. Here's
Speaker 4: what happened. Tons and tons of people moved to Mumbai,
Speaker 4: which was then called Bombay. They would leave for work
Speaker 4: extremely early in the morning and they would work all
Speaker 4: day and into the night. They didn't have time to
Speaker 4: dine out. And so with all these hungry people flooding
Speaker 4: the city, a guy named Mahadeo Havaji bachace partner pronunciation
Speaker 4: figured this out. He said, let me get a small
Speaker 4: army of dudes to deliver food. And these deliverymen became
Speaker 4: known as dabba wallas, which translates to the one who
Speaker 4: carries a box. And if you ever want to have
Speaker 4: an interesting lunchbox, check out Tiffins Tiffi in They're super cool.
Speaker 4: I keep trying to rationalize buying what But this service
Speaker 4: is so successful delivering food that it booms. It feeds
Speaker 4: hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis and
Speaker 4: continues to do so during the rise of food delivery apps.
Speaker 4: This system, by the way, is so sophisticated and so
Speaker 4: accurate that management companies study it for guidance. Their error
Speaker 4: rate is something like one in x million.
Speaker 3: Reminds me of the way the British cabbies have to
Speaker 3: study those crazy routes and maps and take that test
Speaker 3: called the knowledge.
Speaker 5: Hmmm, well let's get back okay. So that's an amazing
Speaker 5: alteration into how food can get to you and your family. Right,
Speaker 5: that's a huge change. It's amazing, And then fast forward
Speaker 5: to just us growing up. When you guys were growing up,
Speaker 5: the only food that ever got delivered to my house
Speaker 5: were it was a pizza or from whatever chain, whatever
Speaker 5: pizza chain they would deliver and like a Chinese food
Speaker 5: restaurant basically would come to me. I think, I think
Speaker 5: there may have been an Indian restaurant like that was
Speaker 5: a little bit further a wave, but like they wouldn't
Speaker 5: come to my house basically.
Speaker 3: Just have a steak out, remember a steak out. Their
Speaker 3: whole thing was that they were at delivery, a steak
Speaker 3: delivery place. They would deliver burgers and steaks, and you know,
Speaker 3: kind of the kind of their whole gimmick was was
Speaker 3: the kind of stuff you typically have to go to
Speaker 3: a you know, sit down restaurant for. But that the
Speaker 3: fact that that could even be a business model kind
Speaker 3: of gimmick shows your point that there really were very
Speaker 3: few options. And I always think of Chinese restaurant as
Speaker 3: kind of cornering the market on delivery for a very
Speaker 3: long time.
Speaker 5: Because they would hire specific staff right at a restaurant
Speaker 5: to do their deliveries. That was it, that's what they
Speaker 5: worked for, that's how they got money tips through that
Speaker 5: single restaurant m H.
Speaker 4: Like a pizza delivery workers as well. And this is
Speaker 4: also the age of the frozen food delivery truck, where
Speaker 4: there would be came the different names of them. These
Speaker 4: guys would drive through neighborhoods similar to ice cream vans,
Speaker 4: and they would deliver like a month's worth of frozen,
Speaker 4: you know, microwave meals. But you might be interested to find,
Speaker 4: Matt that we have a returning guest in tonight's story.
Speaker 4: The notorious consulting firm McKenzie. McKenzie agrees with you, Matt.
Speaker 4: They say that just low less than two decades ago,
Speaker 4: if you want a delivery with notable exceptions like your
Speaker 4: example Steakeout Noll, most people in the US, if they
Speaker 4: were able to get delivery, they would get something from
Speaker 4: a Chinese restaurant or they would get pizza delivered. It
Speaker 4: became normalized, and now that is no longer the case.
Speaker 4: The food delivery industry has as of just like three
Speaker 4: years ago, it was worth more than one hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty billion dollars and that price is the result of
Speaker 4: a triple digit growth since twenty seventeen. And then it
Speaker 4: was already doing gangbusters. Before the COVID nineteen pandemic hit,
Speaker 4: it was growing about eight percent a year, and then
Speaker 4: everything changed because you couldn't go places right, or you
Speaker 4: didn't want to go places you risk exposing yourself and
Speaker 4: your loved ones to a very dangerous pathogen. So now
Speaker 4: we're in the current situation where in the US alone,
Speaker 4: sixty percent of people order delivery or get some takeaway
Speaker 4: at least once a week. And I don't know about you, guys,
Speaker 4: but in the interest of transparency, I'm probably among that number.
Speaker 4: I cook a lot, but not every single day of
Speaker 4: the week.
Speaker 3: I think I love to cook as well, but I
Speaker 3: admittedly do delivery minimum two times a week, like complete transparency,
Speaker 3: no question about it.
Speaker 2: Sometimes more well, well, I'll just be the minor outlayer.
Speaker 5: I've pretty much stopped unless I don't have time to
Speaker 5: make food for my son after like for instance, after
Speaker 5: we're recording or something and there's not enough time between
Speaker 5: bedtime and me, you know, stopping recording with you guys,
Speaker 5: then I will maybe do a DoorDash or something, but.
Speaker 3: I arrive like right when you're done.
Speaker 2: It's it's as really helpful for that too, exactly.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you guys ever seen me pull
Speaker 5: my phone up like as right, it's to an episode,
Speaker 5: but it's because it's I kind of have to do
Speaker 5: it or.
Speaker 3: Else having for those lifestyle you know, the necessities. It's
Speaker 3: also a great crutch for lazy people. It's probably more
Speaker 3: my deal.
Speaker 5: But yeah, but just to the point, Ben, I think
Speaker 5: it is so it can't be understated how much the
Speaker 5: fear of catching some potentially scary thing was and how
Speaker 5: much that pushed all of us, like globally humanity to
Speaker 5: move in this direction.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and right now, the online delivery business is projected
Speaker 4: to reach one trillion dollars by twenty thirty. That's assuming
Speaker 4: another pandemic spike doesn't occur. If another global crisis like
Speaker 4: the pandemic spikes again, then that number is going to
Speaker 4: be much much higher. I think the way I put
Speaker 4: it was a pandemic spike, puts some real stink on
Speaker 4: those numbers. But that's perhaps a big Yeah.
Speaker 3: It reminds me too of the way, like it's become
Speaker 3: really difficult to get people to fully commit to going
Speaker 3: back to the office because that whole trend just was
Speaker 3: so you know, hammered into us the whole work from
Speaker 3: home thing. People are kind of wont to give it up.
Speaker 3: So it becomes this whole negotiation with employers where it's like, well,
Speaker 3: if you come into the office a couple of days
Speaker 3: a week, we'll give you free snacks or something, because
Speaker 3: you know, it's hard to turn back the clock when
Speaker 3: people make these big life changes.
Speaker 4: Agreed and no. Obviously, for anybody who tuned into our
Speaker 4: previous episode, you know that McKenzie is a source with
Speaker 4: let's say an angle. They have a goal. The research
Speaker 4: is solid though. They point to the pandemic's effect on
Speaker 4: food service and they say, you know, check it out.
Speaker 4: Restaurants that once upon a time would never serve takeout
Speaker 4: they found themselves relying on it to keep their business afloat,
Speaker 4: and companies like door Dash, grub Hub, Uber Eats, and
Speaker 4: so on, etc. At all they flourished during this time.
Speaker 4: Though to be absolutely fair, we cannot necessarily say the
Speaker 4: same about the drivers working for those companies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is you know, a pretty deep topic,
Speaker 3: you know, because obviously you see there's so much wrapped
Speaker 3: into it from very recent history. So this might be
Speaker 3: the first and sort of a mini series of episodes
Speaker 3: but for now, let's leave the history stuff there largely,
Speaker 3: and let's move on to this. If you live in
Speaker 3: a developed country and have a disposable income, let's call it.
Speaker 3: Although sometimes it's just you know this, you have to eat.
Speaker 3: To your point about Checkers, Ben, it's just a matter
Speaker 3: of like what options do you have, how much are
Speaker 3: you going to spend? Can you afford to have this
Speaker 3: delivered right to your door? So if you do have
Speaker 3: the means to pay that extra fee, all sorts of
Speaker 3: restaurants are at your disposal to wait upon you hand
Speaker 3: and foot, everything from you know, fast food restaurants like
Speaker 3: Checkers to literal fine dieting. A lot of these really
Speaker 3: nice places are supplementing their income by you know, having
Speaker 3: a delivery component. Some places totally we're like, no, we
Speaker 3: don't do that, that's not we don't have the personnel,
Speaker 3: and that we should get into that a little bit
Speaker 3: too late, and I'm sure you will. It's about how
Speaker 3: much personnel this takes and how much of a tax
Speaker 3: that can put on the people making the food. That's
Speaker 3: obviously a big part of this episode. But you can
Speaker 3: call a restaurant directly, sure, and honestly, a lot of
Speaker 3: places would ask that you do do that because if
Speaker 3: you use a go between like an Uber eats or whatever,
Speaker 3: there are fees involved in the restaurants having to pay
Speaker 3: out some of their you know, their profits to these
Speaker 3: these third party services. So people typically don't really do
Speaker 3: that they use these apps. But often if you search
Speaker 3: for a type of food, whatever you might want, it's
Speaker 3: there and then you just wait and frankly, depending on
Speaker 3: what neighborhood you live in, what part of the world
Speaker 3: you live in, it can come pretty absurdly quick.
Speaker 4: But with all that being true, tonight's question it dives
Speaker 4: into something that might surprise a lot of us listening
Speaker 4: to law at home. Where do all these restaurants come from?
Speaker 4: When you search for a genre of cuisine, Like you say,
Speaker 4: I want some faw and there's a pa restaurant you've
Speaker 4: never heard of, but they can get it to you
Speaker 4: in thirty five minutes. Who are these people? What the
Speaker 4: heck is a ghost kitchen? I suggest we pause for
Speaker 4: a word from our sponsors, maybe a quick snack break,
Speaker 4: and then continue to explore because God, it's such a
Speaker 4: cool name. Ghost kitchen. Yeah, here's where it gets crazy.
Speaker 4: We've talked about this one a little bit off air,
Speaker 4: and maybe I think we mentioned it in a stream
Speaker 4: news or listener mail segment. But a great way to
Speaker 4: get into this phenomenon is a Reddit thread from twenty
Speaker 4: twenty in Philadelphia. Shout out to Reddit user Kendall Neff,
Speaker 4: who ordered what she thought was pizza from a local
Speaker 4: Philly restaurant called Pasqually's or Pascali's.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this is the one you brought I think, Ben,
Speaker 5: you brought this up, or when you guys brought this up,
Speaker 5: and I was like, what is Pasqually's And you guys
Speaker 5: are like, oh, let me tell you.
Speaker 2: But isn't it the idea where you're just you're in
Speaker 2: one of.
Speaker 5: These apps and you you find a place that looks
Speaker 5: to be pretty nearby, you order what you think is
Speaker 5: a local pizza.
Speaker 3: Well, and pasqually certainly has the ring of truth to
Speaker 3: it in terms of like, you know, local Philly type fair.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think one of the most popular Philly
Speaker 3: places is called Peaquads, and then there's also like a
Speaker 3: cheese steak type place with names like that. It has
Speaker 3: that sort of you know, oh this seems legit, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's Philly is face for having restaurants where it's
Speaker 4: some guy's name, right, So this pizza and wing joint
Speaker 4: passes that sniff test and our friend from Reddit. She
Speaker 4: gets her food delivered and she texts the driver afterwards
Speaker 4: after the delivery succeeds, and she says, quote, also, just curious.
Speaker 4: Was this food from Chuck E Cheese? The driver replies
Speaker 4: and says, there was. This was the Chucky Cheese store,
Speaker 4: but the windows had the Wing restaurant on them. I
Speaker 4: was curious too, go lmao.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, what tipped her off to ask
Speaker 3: the driver that question? I'm curious there, she was already
Speaker 3: suspicious before it even arrived.
Speaker 5: Let me just say, I think we all know a
Speaker 5: Chuck E Cheese pizza when we've tasted a Chuck E
Speaker 5: Cheese pizza one time?
Speaker 2: Yeah, tasted it again, school.
Speaker 4: Lunch pizza jobs. Yeah exactly. I'm with you there, Matt,
Speaker 4: Because it turns out our pal Charles Entertainment has been
Speaker 4: using some burner identities. Pasqually is the name of the
Speaker 4: chef in the Chucky Cheese Extended Universe and the human
Speaker 4: he's a party animal. If you go pizza party animal,
Speaker 4: just so, and if you go to delivery websites across
Speaker 4: the US. You will see Pasqually's all over the place
Speaker 4: because there are a lot of Chucky Cheeses still. Check
Speaker 4: out our ridiculous history series on the history of Charles entertainment.
Speaker 4: And they so people ask them about this. They asked
Speaker 4: Chuck E Cheese about this this.
Speaker 3: Second no comment, get out of here with that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this kind of name switch ru is not, for
Speaker 4: the record illegal, and they said, They said the following
Speaker 4: they were talking to Business Insider and one of their
Speaker 4: reps said, best Wally's Pizza and Wings is a delivery only,
Speaker 4: premium pizza brand operating from Chuck E Cheese kitchens. So
Speaker 4: dba doing business as well.
Speaker 3: We also know Chuck E Cheese has had some financial
Speaker 3: woes for a long time and it was just exacerbated
Speaker 3: by the pandemic. So this makes a lot of sense
Speaker 3: where they're like, holy crap, We've got this the golden
Speaker 3: opportunity to like kind of trick people, but do it
Speaker 3: in a way that's like not overtly bad until they
Speaker 3: get caught. I don't blame them exactly, but it's shady. Still,
Speaker 3: it's seen, don't you guys think kind of But yeah,
Speaker 3: defense too.
Speaker 5: They've got a commercial kitchen in every one of their locations.
Speaker 5: They're probably not cooking that much pizza for the kids
Speaker 5: that are running around doing all the gaming and stuff.
Speaker 4: Right on your Jesus, especially during a pandemic.
Speaker 5: This feels like a move because I don't I can't
Speaker 5: imagine that you could capture a lot of the market
Speaker 5: share if you just said, hey, we're chuck e Cheese.
Speaker 4: We delivered exactly. I mean you could. You could say
Speaker 4: it's a willful deception, and there's some validity to that,
Speaker 4: But on the other hand, it is a smart and
Speaker 4: totally legal business move. Let's face it, chuck does not
Speaker 4: have the most stellar rep amid pizza snobs and right,
Speaker 4: and you know, it's whether whether or not you agree
Speaker 4: with the idea of folks. We might be surprised to
Speaker 4: learn chuck Ee is not the only rat in the
Speaker 4: game here. Applebee's also delivers food under a sub brand
Speaker 4: called Neighborhood Wings. Just Salad has another brand called Health Tribes.
Speaker 4: These are targeted, or at least Health Tribes is targeted
Speaker 4: at people with dietary restrictions. Doghouse has eight other virtual brands.
Speaker 4: Companies love this stuff because the look, all the food
Speaker 4: goes through the same health standards as any other restaurant.
Speaker 4: They are to your point, Matt, they're just aware of
Speaker 4: pre existing brand associations and the baggage that comes with that.
Speaker 4: So if you're already ordering something expensive like Uber Eats
Speaker 4: is always going to be kind of expensive, then you
Speaker 4: might not want to say, I'll pay for chuck e cheese.
Speaker 4: You might want to say, if I'm splurging, let me
Speaker 4: get something quality, let me go past scalies.
Speaker 5: Well, let's talk about that just with Applebee's because the
Speaker 5: Neighborhood Wings thing is a newer thing, and it before
Speaker 5: they tried to call it Cosmic Wings and really put
Speaker 5: it off as though it was a whole separate thing,
Speaker 5: and then they had to shudder that whole side of
Speaker 5: the business and move it over to basically this thing,
Speaker 5: the Neighborhood Wings or like if you go to the
Speaker 5: website Cosmicwings dot com, I think that's what it is. Yeah,
Speaker 5: for during the pandemic, that was a whole separate business
Speaker 5: that Applebee's was running kind of without the Applebee's, but
Speaker 5: it was all from Applebee's.
Speaker 3: But was it even like like spins on Applebee's dishes,
Speaker 3: do they because even so many Applebee's stuff, ask Paul
Speaker 3: Mission Control is one of his favorite restaurants. They're kind
Speaker 3: of signatory dishes, you know, like they like, you know,
Speaker 3: what is it now, I'm thinking of Chili's but like,
Speaker 3: for let's take chilies for example, like Southwestern egg rolls.
Speaker 3: You'd see that on a menu for another place and
Speaker 3: be like, where have I heard of this before? Or
Speaker 3: were they like kind of masquerading the names of the
Speaker 3: dishes too, or maybe even just using the ingredients in
Speaker 3: different ways.
Speaker 4: A little bit of all, a little bit of all
Speaker 4: those approaches, depending on the venue or the outfit. And
Speaker 4: you know, look, this is to be clear. This was
Speaker 4: not as some kind of crooked conspiracy to move like
Speaker 4: contaminated pizza or literal bad apples.
Speaker 2: This was we have no proof of that.
Speaker 3: We have no proof yet these pies.
Speaker 4: And of course if that is the case, they'll never
Speaker 4: get in trouble because the franchise model is a hell
Speaker 4: of an argument in court. But these so we're showing
Speaker 4: you that this is a very common practice. As a
Speaker 4: matter of fact, there is a non zero chance that
Speaker 4: some of us listening this evening might have a new
Speaker 4: favorite restaurant from the pandemic, and guess what it might
Speaker 4: be the I hop up the street just gonna let
Speaker 4: you know, let's step out of Plato's grub hubcalf here
Speaker 4: and be honest with each other.
Speaker 3: Well, it's so easy to get caught up in like
Speaker 3: brand stuff, you know where it's like this place is
Speaker 3: known for having the best eggs in town, and that
Speaker 3: hype can kind of infiltrate your mind and your perceptions.
Speaker 3: And they might just be lightly seasoned scrambled eggs, but
Speaker 3: because you got it from X place that's got a reputation,
Speaker 3: it tastes better. So, you know, Pasqually's, you're thinking that
Speaker 3: it's like, oh, I've discovered this new neighborhood joint. You
Speaker 3: in your mind might have these positive associations with something
Speaker 3: that you've definitely eaten before. At a kid's birthday party.
Speaker 5: We learned that you guys, remember we talked with Oh gosh,
Speaker 5: our friends at Savor talked with this one time about
Speaker 5: the perceptions of wine, right, and like just great analog
Speaker 5: for sure, just the price, the way the label looks,
Speaker 5: the environment in which you're enjoying it. Like so much
Speaker 5: of the psychology behind the way your brain interprets that flavor.
Speaker 5: I think it's it's so strong here when it comes
Speaker 5: to the branding that you see when you're scrolling through
Speaker 5: potential food options.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely, because taste, enjoyment of something you taste is
Speaker 4: weirdly similar to experiences on hallucinogens. Seeing and setting and
Speaker 4: context play a huge role, even onto the color of
Speaker 4: the plate that your food is on, like a blue
Speaker 4: versus red plate, And this is weird. Also, the science
Speaker 4: behind samolier practices not as solid as we would all
Speaker 4: like to think. But these in these cases, these are
Speaker 4: all established, often gigantic national brands, and they're wearing you know,
Speaker 4: they're wearing a fake mustache and some glasses to get
Speaker 4: into your house, but you know, to serve you good food.
Speaker 4: They just don't want you to know that's actually Charles
Speaker 4: underneath the glasses of the trench goat. But there's something
Speaker 4: else that happened and it's going to continue happening. Probably
Speaker 4: what if the restaurant you were ordering from isn't a
Speaker 4: physical restaurant at all. This is the rise of the
Speaker 4: ghost kitchen. And like you said it before we went
Speaker 4: to the ad break, ghost kitchen is such a cool name.
Speaker 4: It should be the name of a band or an album,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. I would listen to a mixtape.
Speaker 4: I would listen to DJ Collead's Ghost Kitchen.
Speaker 3: It reminds me a lot of ghost guns, which is
Speaker 3: a similarly not untraceable. But I guess the idea here
Speaker 3: is that you don't know where it came from, and
Speaker 3: that's what a ghost gun is. It's like a gun
Speaker 3: where the providence of it is kind of difficult to determine.
Speaker 5: The other name for these, which I think is great too.
Speaker 5: I'm sure you guys saw this as a dark kitchen.
Speaker 4: Or delivery only kitchen, but dark kitchen and ghost kitchen
Speaker 4: are the two best.
Speaker 3: And one part of this that makes a lot of
Speaker 3: sense too, is to use get the most bang for
Speaker 3: your buck. If you're a business owner and you like
Speaker 3: have a kitchen, a commercial kitchen, maybe people aren't coming
Speaker 3: in and sitting down as much anymore, so maybe you
Speaker 3: have a lot of space and a lot of commercial
Speaker 3: kitchen equipment and implements. It's a great way to maximize
Speaker 3: the use of all of that and stay afloat. Because
Speaker 3: we know the margins for restaurants are very narrow, and
Speaker 3: that stuff's very expensive.
Speaker 5: Oh man, Just the the regulations you have to follow
Speaker 5: to have a functional commercial kitchen in any given state,
Speaker 5: because they do very by state here in the United States,
Speaker 5: at least. Like, it's not only is it money, it
Speaker 5: is effort. It is special. Like you need to have
Speaker 5: somebody who knows what they're doing.
Speaker 3: Ramsey kitchen nightmares, you know, to see just how quickly
Speaker 3: these things can fall apart and crumble into the ground.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and look, it's also tremendously expensive to open a
Speaker 4: traditional restaurant. It's crazy money, which is why a lot
Speaker 4: of times, very talented chefs team up with someone who's
Speaker 4: essentially the money person, right, and they make all kinds
Speaker 4: of sacrifices on the way just to fit that bottom line.
Speaker 4: That's also why menus change, depending again on broader sociological patterns.
Speaker 4: There's a method to the madness here. Each of these,
Speaker 4: we'll call them delivery kitchens. Now you know what, let's
Speaker 4: call them ghost kitchens. Let's go with the cool name.
Speaker 4: Each of these they're typically going to be located in
Speaker 4: areas where a lot of people order food delivered. So
Speaker 4: your favorite large or mid size city in the US
Speaker 4: almost definitely has a series of ghost kitchens. Now it's
Speaker 4: never just one, and the kitchens themselves, they'll have like
Speaker 4: a big storefront. You can't roll up to one of
Speaker 4: these places that often looks like a warehouse and say hey,
Speaker 4: let me get you know, a number three, or let
Speaker 4: me get a mean chicken palm. They'll say, go to
Speaker 4: the app, sir, and and order it to a different address.
Speaker 4: This is a virtual restaurant. It's a digital storefront, which
Speaker 4: means they save so much money not just on real estate,
Speaker 4: but on front of house, on overhead, on all those
Speaker 4: other things that will just nickel and dime a traditional
Speaker 4: food joint to death.
Speaker 3: It's almost like a digital version of the kind of
Speaker 3: pop up c see a lot of times where a
Speaker 3: restaurant will will allow a budding chef to use their
Speaker 3: kitchen or to use their space for you know, an
Speaker 3: exclusive period of time or whatever tests exactly but like
Speaker 3: you know, you it's an event. But like with this,
Speaker 3: you can kind of get on, get your thing off
Speaker 3: the ground really quickly and test the waters. And I
Speaker 3: know a lot of places that probably start like this
Speaker 3: and then ease their way into getting a brick and
Speaker 3: mortar space after they realize that the demand is there,
Speaker 3: which I think is really cool as opposed to spending
Speaker 3: all the money and then realizing, oh no, we've made
Speaker 3: a horrible decision. We can't sustain this.
Speaker 4: Places like dot Obisco, places like I mean there are
Speaker 4: there are tons. This is very popular in Atlanta, New York,
Speaker 4: and Los Angeles in particular. I imagine many other cities as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, And often the route is this, right, one
Speaker 5: of these shared kitchens, then maybe a food truck in
Speaker 5: a lot of those markets, then.
Speaker 2: A brick and mortar.
Speaker 5: If that's success, you're basically going up a chain now
Speaker 5: of viability in getting your food out to people. And
Speaker 5: this ghost kitchen concept, again from the concept, feels like
Speaker 5: a great idea that would work for everybody.
Speaker 4: Still still a significant amount of financial risk, but a
Speaker 4: far smaller amount of risk that would be associated with
Speaker 4: someone saying it's always been my dream to have a
Speaker 4: seafood counter and we're gonna make fish sandwiches and we're
Speaker 4: just gonna hope people like them for the ten years.
Speaker 4: It takes us to break even, right, That's true, It's true.
Speaker 4: I mean there there's another part here, which is of
Speaker 4: course this makes sense. You're in a sense or sense
Speaker 4: no pun left behind. You're in a prime area. Fraction
Speaker 4: of the costs. You don't have to worry not just
Speaker 4: about the expenses involved with having people sit down in
Speaker 4: a restaurant, but you also will be able to contract
Speaker 4: out with these third parties, these facilities that just own
Speaker 4: that commercial kitchen space and they will do fulfillment and
Speaker 4: logistics services, so you can get this dream that a
Speaker 4: lot of people have quested for in hospitality and restaurant
Speaker 4: restaurant industries. You can just focus on cooking, dude, you don't.
Speaker 4: You don't have to worry about the gripes and the
Speaker 4: rabble rousers. All you have to do is rent out
Speaker 4: space at the appropriate facility. In the beginning, people were
Speaker 4: just running out straight warehouses that had the right utility hookups.
Speaker 4: But now you're going to find a place that is
Speaker 4: like a furnished apartment. You can just move your concept
Speaker 4: in and they'll have everything you need to function at
Speaker 4: the scale of a physical restaurant. Your work goes into
Speaker 4: launching the brand, and by the way, depending on the company,
Speaker 4: for an added fee, they're happy to help you with
Speaker 4: that too.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, are we talking about places like cloud Kitchen.
Speaker 4: We are talking about places like cloud Kitchen, and.
Speaker 3: This was new to me, or at the very least
Speaker 3: this particular company. But even the idea of ghost kitchens
Speaker 3: being more of a service, because I think initially it
Speaker 3: was sort of just a concept where a lot of
Speaker 3: pre existing places sort of got this, you know, bright idea.
Speaker 3: Perhaps simultaneously, I want to I want to learn more
Speaker 3: about the you know, the history of whose idea this
Speaker 3: actually was. But the idea of a company that's like
Speaker 3: this is what they specialize him that was sort of
Speaker 3: like a interesting kind of development for me. I wasn't
Speaker 3: really aware of this angle.
Speaker 5: What's the name of the guy that started this one,
Speaker 5: Travis kalan Nicky.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Also he was deep with Uber beforehand. He's a co
Speaker 4: founder of Uber.
Speaker 5: So the one of the guys, one of the brains
Speaker 5: behind Uber is like, well, let's do uh, let's do
Speaker 5: something similar here in serrupt the restaurant industry.
Speaker 4: As long as we hold to our number one priority.
Speaker 4: Not we're recognizing the rights of the drivers.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're paying taxes correctly, but we'll make the driver sorry,
Speaker 5: I mean kitchen.
Speaker 4: I mean, well, so they're going to pay taxes. What
Speaker 4: are they poor people? Anyway? So Cloud Kitchens you can
Speaker 4: go to their website right now, let's talk a little
Speaker 4: bit about them. According to them, you can get your
Speaker 4: kitchen up and running in as little as one month ish,
Speaker 4: so as little as six weeks honestly, And they say, look,
Speaker 4: we also provide facility management. If you've never been in
Speaker 4: the restaurant industry, that might sound like a dry term,
Speaker 4: but dudes do debts and doudoids listen. That means you
Speaker 4: can work and you don't have to clean grease traps
Speaker 4: at the end of the day, you don't have to
Speaker 4: wipe down friars, You skip all that messy jazz, just
Speaker 4: cook and then you go home.
Speaker 2: You're not a chef if you're not cleaning that kitchen.
Speaker 3: Oh and that's oh, that's part of the business model too,
Speaker 3: is the regimentedness of that and keeping your staff in
Speaker 3: line and keeping your your place spotless or whatever. But
Speaker 3: this to me sounds a whole lot like a kind
Speaker 3: of restaurant version of Airbnb, you know, or you get
Speaker 3: all the privileges of having the space at your disposal,
Speaker 3: but you don't have to do any of the work
Speaker 3: for a price, of course.
Speaker 4: I mean yeah, speaking to prices, look at the math
Speaker 4: for cloud Kitchen. We're using cloud Kitchen as one example,
Speaker 4: but there are multiple entities out there. Cloud Kitchen tells
Speaker 4: you the budding chef or restaurant tour that for as
Speaker 4: little as thirty thousand dollars US, you can start your
Speaker 4: kitchen going in about six weeks and then if everything
Speaker 4: goes right in six months, you will break even and
Speaker 4: that creates a ten percent profit with one million dollars
Speaker 4: in total sale. Of course, again these are ideal conditions.
Speaker 4: This is a lot like just to be honest, and
Speaker 4: this is not a ding on cloud Kitchen nor it's founder,
Speaker 4: But this is a lot like saying, hey, if you
Speaker 4: start running when you're little, you can get the gold
Speaker 4: medal at the Olympics too. You can potentially, but not
Speaker 4: everybody does.
Speaker 5: In the end, all of your efforts and no matter
Speaker 5: what your ghost kitchen is, have to work to hit
Speaker 5: those metrics right. Yes, like your marketing has to be
Speaker 5: spot on to where people using those apps it looks
Speaker 5: at yours and goes, oh, that is the most appealing
Speaker 5: insert food type here, and then you know enough people
Speaker 5: have to order amongst all of the Again, if you're
Speaker 5: in a place that is really big in these ghost kitchens,
Speaker 5: that means there's probably a lot of brick and mortar
Speaker 5: stores around too, and somehow you got to beat that competition.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I had one quick question though, Like you know, I
Speaker 3: made the Airbnb kind of connection, and I'm not sure
Speaker 3: if I'm missing here, but it's cloud kitchens that these
Speaker 3: are all facilities they own and operate, or are they
Speaker 3: connecting budding chefs with available space and potential other ghost
Speaker 3: kitchens that are run by other individuals, largely.
Speaker 4: The former o Ando spaces they also. I mean, it
Speaker 4: just makes sense and it could be a really great
Speaker 4: opportunity for a buddying chef. Again, because restaurants are cutthroat business,
Speaker 4: razor thin margins, a lot of plagiarism occurring, any legal
Speaker 4: edge is an enormous mission critical advantage to everyone involved,
Speaker 4: including potentially you the customer.
Speaker 2: Guys.
Speaker 5: I'm you're right man, I'm thinking of these places called
Speaker 5: salon lofts in Atlanta. Have you ever heard of these?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Is that where?
Speaker 3: You?
Speaker 4: Like? I see it a lot in cosmetology. You can
Speaker 4: rent out a space inside a larger space and you
Speaker 4: pay them rent exactly.
Speaker 5: That's that's like to me, that's a one to one
Speaker 5: to that where you've got kitchens in a facility right
Speaker 5: where you rent your kitchen within their big thing.
Speaker 3: Oh, there's a place in East Atlanta village here that's
Speaker 3: sort of called I forget what the official title is,
Speaker 3: but it's like Beauford Highway and EAV or something like that.
Speaker 3: And be Buford Highway is this area of Atlanta that's
Speaker 3: got a lot of amazing Asian restaurants and Latin restaurants
Speaker 3: and all kinds of different cuisine. But this place it's
Speaker 3: got like five or six different rotating not rotating that
Speaker 3: sort of like are there until they move on, but
Speaker 3: it's in one giant space that clearly they're renting or
Speaker 3: their a little corner of it, almost like you w
Speaker 3: at a table at a flea market or like you know,
Speaker 3: artist's market or something you know, like.
Speaker 4: A food hall there. Yeah. So I think the example
Speaker 4: there with the prefurnished apartment in a nice part of
Speaker 4: tow And that works really well. And these other examples,
Speaker 4: the Salon the Salon Collective also makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 4: This is just good business. In the case of these
Speaker 4: ghost kitchens, business is still boomy. Cloud Kitchens alone, per
Speaker 4: their website, has four separate facilities O and O's in
Speaker 4: the Atlanta area. Surprised by the way in the interest
Speaker 4: of full transparency. Recently, Cloud Kitchen has had some pretty
Speaker 4: big problems as the like they exploded at the start
Speaker 4: of the pandemic. But now as of September of twenty
Speaker 4: twenty three, they've been laying off a lot of staff.
Speaker 4: They've been shuttering warehouse locations because, just like ghost kitchens,
Speaker 4: a lot of businesses that sprang up in the environment
Speaker 4: of the pandemic are now struggling to function with more
Speaker 4: and more people, you know, going back to work, hopping
Speaker 4: back in their cars, going out and frolicking.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's crazy to think.
Speaker 5: They had a valuation of fifteen billion dollars in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty one. Because we again that pandemic state of mind
Speaker 5: and reality that we were in, they were like, Oh,
Speaker 5: this is the new thing, this is the future. It
Speaker 5: will always be like this and it will only.
Speaker 2: Grow from here. And it's just changed a lot.
Speaker 4: And the next question is who is using ghost kitchens?
Speaker 4: Are they? Are they as I had hoped when we
Speaker 4: started researching this, Are they kitchens populated by ghosts. We'll
Speaker 4: tell you afterword from our sponsor, and we've returned. As
Speaker 4: far as we know, all the staff of ghost kitchens
Speaker 4: are in fact human beings, which means they're haunted houses
Speaker 4: with a ghost inside them.
Speaker 2: So sort of you mean the human being is the
Speaker 2: is the haunted house?
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, every human beings a haunted house, is the argument.
Speaker 4: But the thing is, like, if you think about who
Speaker 4: uses ghost kitchens, if you like, we had a nice
Speaker 4: sample size of three here, I think without checking with
Speaker 4: our palle michig control, we've got some folks who are
Speaker 4: ordering out once a week, maybe twice a week. We've
Speaker 4: got some folks who pretty much avoid it unless time
Speaker 4: runs against us. But if you're a person who, for
Speaker 4: one reason or another uses an online service like this,
Speaker 4: unless you know for sure the restaurant you're ordering from,
Speaker 4: you quite possibly have given business to a ghost kitchen.
Speaker 4: There's nothing wrong with it. You're one of the people.
Speaker 4: U see them.
Speaker 3: And so the ghost kitchens, as we've sort of you
Speaker 3: mentioned already, their biggest customers are going to be these
Speaker 3: aspiring chefs and folks that are trying to break into
Speaker 3: the restaurant business. People that have a vision. Perhaps they've
Speaker 3: got some sort of brand they're establishing that's hugely important.
Speaker 3: Just like you mentioned with the savor of conversation, Matt
Speaker 3: about the wine labels and all of that. I mean,
Speaker 3: this stuff is huge and it can really have an
Speaker 3: effect on the way that your taste buds perceive the stuff.
Speaker 3: But what are some other examples of folks that would
Speaker 3: benefit from this kind of model, Guys, I distinctly remember
Speaker 3: sitting with the two of you and our favorite, our
Speaker 3: favorite restaurant, Dave and Busters, and we were looking online.
Speaker 3: We were talking about something called mister Beastberger, and we
Speaker 3: were looking at their website and we noticed that, all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, we had just heard about this thing.
Speaker 3: They had fifty sixty locations listed, like as though they
Speaker 3: were brick and mortar places. And this was before we
Speaker 3: knew much about ghost kitchens. This is a relatively new phenomenon.
Speaker 3: It wasn't like top of mind, and we were like,
Speaker 3: what the hell is going on here? I know this
Speaker 3: mister beasts guy's got a lot of money, YouTube money,
Speaker 3: but this seems out of the realm of possibility for anyone,
Speaker 3: even with like superpowers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one of the big third bucket of ghost kitchen
Speaker 4: customers is going to be we see not. Thanks for
Speaker 4: the edit here, Paul. Celebrities celebrities love a ghost kitchen,
Speaker 4: and you're right well, I appreciate bringing up Dave and
Speaker 4: Busters in any context. By the way, mister Beast back
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty one, street named Jimmy Donaldson. He announced
Speaker 4: that he opened three hundred restaurants across America, caveating we
Speaker 4: only serve people through delivery apps. And I remember checking
Speaker 4: this out with you guys. Because mister Beast, the Mister
Speaker 4: Beast Burger, it mainstreamed public awareness of ghost kitchens. For
Speaker 4: anybody who is not familiar with mister Beast, the guy
Speaker 4: and his team are famous throughout YouTube and therefore the
Speaker 4: world for conducting these amazing, I don't know, stunts, right,
Speaker 4: sometimes pranks like staging a fake bank robbery that ends
Speaker 4: up with giving someone a really nice gift at the end,
Speaker 4: wholesome stuff usually, and New York Times writes about it.
Speaker 4: This mainstreams ghost kitchens, and they say they put the
Speaker 4: relationship this way. They say, in exchange for a cut
Speaker 4: of sales the brand in the case, mister Beast supplies
Speaker 4: the name, the logo, the menu, the recipes, and the
Speaker 4: pr images for any restaurant owner with the space and
Speaker 4: the staff just make some burgers on the side. So
Speaker 4: it so mister Beast Burger became a little bit like
Speaker 4: an anonymous collective of food. You know, it's a it's
Speaker 4: a Wendy's one day, Wendy's franchise one day, and then
Speaker 4: later they're also processing mister beast Burger orders well.
Speaker 3: And to the point I think we mentioned earlier in
Speaker 3: the episode of the kind of scenario with the person
Speaker 3: getting the chuck e cheese delivery and the driver being like,
Speaker 3: well they had this window. I was watching some YouTube
Speaker 3: kind of expos's or a little news pieces about this stuff,
Speaker 3: and a lot of these places have like ten different
Speaker 3: little sticker things outside of their windows. I get maybe
Speaker 3: that's the law. I don't know, maybe it's just a
Speaker 3: style thing. But it's an odd look in them, and
Speaker 3: I think it's.
Speaker 5: Just to let the delivery drivers know, oh, you are
Speaker 5: in the right place.
Speaker 2: This confusing, but ye, you're here.
Speaker 3: It's a hell of a lot cheaper than a sign
Speaker 3: having it printed and installed.
Speaker 4: Look, I like it. I'm all about that stuff. And
Speaker 4: you know, Regardless of how you may feel about places
Speaker 4: like grub hub and door dash and uber, the the
Speaker 4: problems with those places are the systems right in which
Speaker 4: they operate. The problem is just like when you call
Speaker 4: a big company on the phone, the person who is
Speaker 4: delivering the food is not should not be the subject
Speaker 4: of your ire right because they're not the ones making
Speaker 4: those decisions.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I will say this is very hard for me
Speaker 5: to stomach. Huhuh in some ways because I'm imagining. I'm okay,
Speaker 5: Let's just use an example. A you guys know a whopper.
Speaker 5: Everybody knows a burger King whopper, right. A burger King
Speaker 5: whopper is only that because it is the same ingredients
Speaker 5: at every burger King, right, and prepared with the same
Speaker 5: instructions that are at every king.
Speaker 3: Flame broiled though Matt flame broiled.
Speaker 5: But what I mean is for these ghost kitchens, it's
Speaker 5: essentially the same thing, right, The same ingredients are being
Speaker 5: delivered to in a Mister Beast's example. Here, it's like
Speaker 5: to various restaurant kitchens right that are operating, and more.
Speaker 3: Importantly, the packaging it's all from mister Beast Burger. You
Speaker 3: know what I mean? Like, you get these boxes that
Speaker 3: we ordered my kid just as a goof which is
Speaker 3: a mister Beasts fan. We ordered it once and it
Speaker 3: was fine, But the novelty of it was that we
Speaker 3: were ordering fast food delivery from this YouTube star's fake restaurant.
Speaker 5: Yes, but I guess just my point is it with
Speaker 5: mister Beast. It's like various different fast not fast food chains.
Speaker 5: It's like good kitchens, right, sure, like bo isn't it
Speaker 5: mid veil Utah?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: But like example, but it's standardized and if they do
Speaker 3: it right and the kitchens are clean and people know
Speaker 3: what they're doing, the food should be identical, is what
Speaker 3: you're saying. Right, it should be.
Speaker 5: But just imagine the chefs working at a Buca di
Speaker 5: Beppo were making it or is it a separate one
Speaker 5: or two staff members that mister Beaste is hiring.
Speaker 3: I have this question as well. Beast is not hiring them.
Speaker 4: It's a restaurant agreement. But I see, I see your
Speaker 4: point because it leads us to interrogate the concept of consistency, right,
Speaker 4: and that depends upon the restaurants getting very very specific,
Speaker 4: step by step instructions. It's also it's also hilarious to
Speaker 4: me to think that you could go into that Buca
Speaker 4: di Beppo and you know they're cooking the burgers, but
Speaker 4: you can't order them, not at the place, So the
Speaker 4: division seems sort of artificial. There's also another thing we see,
Speaker 4: like the importance of branding and public perception. McDonald's has
Speaker 4: been making a killing with celebrity sponsored meals. It's still
Speaker 4: a big Mac or it's still you know, big macmeal,
Speaker 4: but now it's got BTS packaging slapped on it. The
Speaker 4: famous K pop band, right or Rick and Morty, Sejuan
Speaker 4: Sauce and people. Scott used their mind over this stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and that's what that's what the company that partnered with
Speaker 4: Mister Beast sought to do. Their name is Virtual Dining
Speaker 4: Concepts v DC. And they said, Okay, this Mister Beast
Speaker 4: thing is really good for us. Let's partner with Mario Lopez,
Speaker 4: let's from Saved by the Bell, and let's partner with
Speaker 4: a guy named Polly D. People in the conference room said,
Speaker 4: who the heck is Polly D? And from there he's
Speaker 4: from the shore and they said, what's the shore? It
Speaker 4: was like the Jersey Shore And who knows if they
Speaker 4: know that's a reality show or if they thought this
Speaker 4: guy was just big news. On the boardwalk of the
Speaker 4: Garden State.
Speaker 5: They were talking about Paul Dean just styling on it
Speaker 5: right right in a different life DBA, Paul Michigan Control
Speaker 5: dec DBA is poly duh.
Speaker 4: It all worked out, as Kurt Vonna get once said,
Speaker 4: everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. Kidding, Matt, your point
Speaker 4: was astute. Mister Beast had a problem with the quality.
Speaker 4: Mister Beast sued VDC eventually to stop production of mister
Speaker 4: Beastburger's entirely. They said, this virtual dining concept thing, they're
Speaker 4: more focused on expanding their business so they can pitch
Speaker 4: to other celebrities. That's what they want to be their
Speaker 4: primary model, and they're not paying attention to the quality
Speaker 4: of the food. They're just getting the bag and then
Speaker 4: ditch and town.
Speaker 5: Well yeah, but did you hear VDC's response to mister
Speaker 5: Beast's attorneys. Yeah, yeah, they were essentially like, actually, we
Speaker 5: didn't want to continue on with the contract with mister Beast,
Speaker 5: and that's why he's upset and that's why he's suing,
Speaker 5: so we're countersaving.
Speaker 3: So the truth though, because I heard mister I heard
Speaker 3: kind of both of those, but it sounded to me
Speaker 3: basically right to your point. Maybe mister Beast was just
Speaker 3: doing a spin on it, But do you guys have
Speaker 3: a sense of which which which version is true?
Speaker 5: Living courts decide it might be it might be something
Speaker 5: for the courts.
Speaker 4: The winners in this case are going to be the
Speaker 4: legal teams because both sides here have some financial theft,
Speaker 4: so we we don't know how that will work out.
Speaker 4: A breached contract argument is nothing new in the business world.
Speaker 4: But we know this is not all pipe dreams and
Speaker 4: angel farts. We've seen some companies over expanding. We've seen
Speaker 4: bad blood happen between so called creatives and ghost kitchen initiatives.
Speaker 4: But one thing's for sure. Ghost kitchens are reality. I
Speaker 4: don't love the phrase, but they might be the new normal.
Speaker 4: They've fundamentally transformed the course of the restaurant industry. I
Speaker 4: did not know this, but he knows a legend in
Speaker 4: the ghost kitchen game. I hop, you, guys. I hop
Speaker 4: is gargantuan in the world of ghost kitchens.
Speaker 2: That makes so much sense.
Speaker 3: They can make anything at an eye off us little deep. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they make crapes, for God's sake. Crapes.
Speaker 4: This is just a tangent here because we're a little
Speaker 4: looser at the end of the year. But did I
Speaker 4: tell you guys about Denny's in Japan, Like you guys
Speaker 4: know Denny's.
Speaker 3: Do they have moons over Mihami or is it called
Speaker 3: something different?
Speaker 4: It is crazy? Okay. First off, it's one of the
Speaker 4: only places that has free refills, which is very much
Speaker 4: an American thing, So that alone is a huge sale.
Speaker 3: Also nice apparently as a bit of an American thing.
Speaker 4: Also, it's a huge Uh, it's a huge step up.
Speaker 4: It's a much nicer restaurant and it's weirdly Italian by
Speaker 4: the way, Denny's in japad at least. Yeah, and it's like, uh,
Speaker 4: it's a it's a night out on the town kind
Speaker 4: of place you go to. The similar to how PBR
Speaker 4: perhaps Blue Ribbon is considered a fancy beer in parts
Speaker 4: of China, and it comes in a whole different like
Speaker 4: it comes in like a wine bottle. It's quite expensive
Speaker 4: and a lot of the beers.
Speaker 3: Come and kind of wine bottles over in Japan and China.
Speaker 3: I've noticed that we've seen it in films anyway.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and and look We're not going to disparage the
Speaker 4: good folks at Denny's nor PBR because it did. It
Speaker 4: is an award winning beer. I guess technically right, they
Speaker 4: named it after the Blue.
Speaker 3: Ribbon one at that one time, at the very least,
Speaker 3: you know. For a couple of last thoughts on my end,
Speaker 3: I was just wondering, do you guys think that we've
Speaker 3: already reached kind of peak ghost kitchen? And now the
Speaker 3: term is sort of a nag. No, you don't think so,
Speaker 3: because to me, in culinary circles, if if you find
Speaker 3: out something's coming from a ghost kitchen, then that sort
Speaker 3: of I think it sort of carries with it a
Speaker 3: bit of a blotch on the reputation of the food
Speaker 3: because of all the things we're talking about. But maybe
Speaker 3: I'm misperceiving.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's it's perspective, right, Just like for one,
Speaker 4: I don't know if this is helpful, but in the
Speaker 4: early days of baseball, it was considered cheating to use
Speaker 4: a glove to catch the ball, and now that's normal.
Speaker 4: I think what we're seeing is a process of normalization.
Speaker 3: I think it depends on the situation too, right, If
Speaker 3: it's one of those up and coming folks that we're
Speaker 3: talking about. That's one thing. But if it's Chuck E
Speaker 3: Cheese trying to trick you into buying their crappy pizza,
Speaker 3: that's another thing.
Speaker 5: I'm no economist, but I do think we're in a
Speaker 5: retraction from something that was catching on because it was
Speaker 5: so economically viable. Now it's customers going through a process
Speaker 5: of getting used to it, right, and once we're used
Speaker 5: to it enough, I think this is just what it's
Speaker 5: going to be, because you know, if we look at
Speaker 5: what we studied on this show about real estate and
Speaker 5: commercial real estate, right, and like how expensive that is,
Speaker 5: and how running a brick and mortar in the long run,
Speaker 5: at this point it's probably going to become less and
Speaker 5: less of a viable thing. It's already really difficult. It's
Speaker 5: going to get harder and harder and harder. But then
Speaker 5: having one big, massive kitchen where you know, hundreds, if
Speaker 5: not thousands of delivery drivers show up to every day,
Speaker 5: that's like somewhere central, centrally located in a city.
Speaker 2: Like, how is that not going to be a thing?
Speaker 3: You guys?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 4: I would argue that what we're seeing as well is
Speaker 4: a democratization of restaurants through technology, of ownership through technology.
Speaker 4: For someone starting out, this process is way less intimidating
Speaker 4: they having to buy out a piece of real estate,
Speaker 4: make friends with someone for millions of dollars, and then
Speaker 4: just hope you guys get along for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 4: But it's also dependent insidiously, inseparably so on the concept
Speaker 4: of third party delivery apps, and each of those has
Speaker 4: a troubled history when it comes to workers' rights, fair
Speaker 4: practices with partner restaurants, and customer satisfaction. I mean, I
Speaker 4: think this is something that we dive into with your help,
Speaker 4: Conspiracy Realist, and future episodes do have one last note
Speaker 4: for everybody wondering. You heard about the world's first pizza delivery,
Speaker 4: and you, like us, probably thought, well, did Kingbirdo tip
Speaker 4: on the world's first pizza delivery? That and many other
Speaker 4: aspects of this story remain the stuff they don't want
Speaker 4: you to know. I can't wait to hear what you think, folks.
Speaker 4: Matt nol I'm I am going to guess that a
Speaker 4: couple of people listening to the show this evening might
Speaker 4: be driving for door Dash or grub Hub or Uber
Speaker 4: Eats as they listen tonight, so it'd be amazing to
Speaker 4: hear some firsthand experiences with.
Speaker 3: This one hundred percent. You can send us those firsthand
Speaker 3: experiences in all kinds of ways. First, you can send
Speaker 3: it to us online via social media where we are
Speaker 3: Conspiracy Stuff on x, Facebook and YouTube. Also be looking
Speaker 3: for some really fun YouTube content coming in the very
Speaker 3: near future. You can also find YouTube shorts that were
Speaker 3: already putting out there and on Instagram and TikTok. Find
Speaker 3: our videos at conspira Stuff show.
Speaker 5: Hey, if you want to call us and tell us
Speaker 5: about your experience with a ghost kitchen parking situation, because
Speaker 5: we've read some stories in the news about how crazy
Speaker 5: the parking is around some of these hubs. Right, call
Speaker 5: us and tell us with your stories. Our number is
Speaker 5: one eight three three std WYTK. When you do call in,
Speaker 5: give yourself a cool nickname, and then you got three
Speaker 5: minutes say whatever you'd like. Just please, please, please let
Speaker 5: us know if we can use your name and message
Speaker 5: on the air. If you've got more to say than
Speaker 5: could fit in that three minutes, why not instead shoot
Speaker 5: us an email.
Speaker 4: That's right, send us a good old fashioned email, Give
Speaker 4: us those clips, give us those pictures, give us the links,
Speaker 4: take us to the edge of the rabbit hole. We'll
Speaker 4: do the rest. We read every note we get at
Speaker 4: conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 5: Stuff they don't want you to know is a production
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