The Deceptive World of Ghost Kitchens

i remember when merch used to be a hoodie, or maybe a phone case if you were extra fancy. we're out here dropping burgers now 💀

I kept finding ghost kitchens claiming to be completely gluten free. I have celiac disease and finding out my food was being made in a non-gluten free environment explained why I kept getting sick 🙃

Lol as a graphic designer, I know too well that feeling Eddy had of being proud of something you designed and then you ask for feedback and they're like "actually this is lame" 😀

so ghost kitchens don’t sell food for ghost?

This is one of the reasons I stopped using delivery apps, the other being the price markups. I’d rather just go through a local restaurant’s website than try to figure out which restaurant is actually real.

I WAS UNPAID WORKING FOR GHOST KITCHENS. I worked at an outback for over a year serving to-go side, so i made the tender shack orders too (god it felt weird seeing it mentioned here) and gave them to dashers who were always confused trying to find us. I would have to explain that we were really the tender shack, and no the food wasnt different. As togo people we worked for tips like servers rather than for hourly wages. Meaning we could only make money on Outback orders that Outback Cutomers tipped us for fulfilling. But a quarter of the work i did was for "tendershack" whoever that is, and made no money on those orders specifically. We also started delivering Outback EXCLUSIVELY through doordash, and made no money on those orders either. At this point fulfilling doordash orders i couldnt make money on was half my job.

Jacksfilms just appearing out of nowhere only to host a focus group is incredible

Personally I’ve only ever had one experience with ghost kitchens before. One time a new vegan restaurant popped up on Uber Eats in my city. I love eating out so right away I tried to find out more about it, but they had no physical address listed anywhere. The menu pics that looked like a bunch of stock photos made this whole thing seem even more suspicious, so I ended up never ordering any of their stuff.

A few months later the virtual restaurant closed and it turned out that it was actually just part of an already existing fast food chain, which served meat as part of their menu. That was so wild to me cause the food delivery apps never mentioned anything about the possibility of cross contamination 😨 and while I personally don’t care, I do know people who refuse to order anything from places that serve meat (for either ethical, religious, or medical reasons), so I don’t think a restaurant like that should be allowed to be promoted as 100% vegan - it sounds both dangerous and like false advertising. As if the real local plant-based small business weren’t struggling enough already…

My favorite line, and one I’m definitely going to use: “Because it is not a persons job when they pay for food to investigate whether they’re being lied to or not.” 👏

The worst is when you HATE a restaurant cuz they’ve wronged you in some way (I hate my local Red Robin’s but won’t get into the story) and then you vow to never eat there again so u try somewhere else. The sucky part is finding out you actually ordered from Red Robin’s selling burgers under a different name and and giving your business right back to them where u didn’t want it to go.

The is journalism! What an awesome piece about someone realizing something's off about their food, looking into it, and calling out the companies allowing this to happened. You're doing the good work Eddy

This was legitimately some of the best investigative reporting I ever seen on YouTube. Well done.

I’m a DoorDash driver and I spent ten minutes looking for a Chinese food place to pick up my customer’s order only to find out their “authentic Chinese food” was inside a TGI Friday’s.

There’s no accountability for these restaurants either! If customers have a problem, like how you didn’t get what you ordered from MrBeast, the delivery company is the one that deals with it. The restaurant itself never answers for it. And often, companies like DoorDash won’t give you a whole refund if you’ve had other refunds in the past, because they assume you’re a fraudster. Doesn’t matter if your last 5 orders were legitimately messed up. And if you want an item remade or replaced, you’re just SOL, better place another order and hope this one works out.

The whole thing is just absolutely rife with corruption. Courier apps lining their pockets with the money of both drivers and customers in ways that should be illegal. Corporations masquerading as small businesses and skirting regulations and accountability. It’s too bad the country is basically run by many of the same companies these days. Billions are spent every year to ensure the government turns a blind eye to corporate corruption. Icing on the cake is they get away with it, AND get taxpayer funded bailouts anytime they come crying. We’re fucked both ways by these people.

Sorry that turned into a rant lol. High five to anyone who actually read this. I love you.

Thank you for exposing this seedy industry for what it is! The fact that some of these restaurants are not only deceptive but aren’t even passing health and safety inspections is extremely concerning. Thank goodness I saw this video! I’ll think twice before I order from a restaurant I don’t recognize. I’ll at least see if there is a brick and mortar location on Google street view, so I know I’m supporting a local business and not some greedy invisible corporation that is doing these sorts of sneaky and potentially dangerous ghost kitchens.

As a general manager of a chain restaurant i can say that ghost kitchens are the absolute worst. Having a restaurant that is known for making pizza (example) now has to make burgers completely disrupts your kitchen during peak times. It's awful. We have 4 ghost kitchens in our location and anytime a mr beast order comes in it completely throws off the rhythm of the kitchen and causes huge delays. The main reason is that these restaurants are designed to make specific food items. And then you add items that don't fit with the concept it causes a complete clusterfuck.

I live somewhere with very little ghost kitchens- in fact, I've only ever seen central kitchens on delivery apps. But seeing this American Phenomenon covered so in-depth with copious amount of research and even a hypothesis testing is truly remarkable and impressive. Niche first-world problems mystify me and you've gotten me completely hooked on this topic. You should seriously be proud of yourself with this 40 minute long documentary!

No joke, a Mr Beast burger in my city operates out of a Ford dealership. I was so confused when I went to pick up my order.

the fact that eddy does not once comment on the fact that jacksfilms is running his completely legitimate focus group is so funny

I didn't know Ghost Kitchens existed before this video. It makes a lot of sense because I was recently delivering DoorDash and had an order from "Pardon My Cheesesteak", which I had never seen locally or heard of, and much to my confusion it was inside of an IHOP.