Farm to Table? More Like Ghost Kitchen to Sofa | Hacker News Reader

Farm to Table? More Like Ghost Kitchen to Sofa

nytimes.com

46 pointsENOTTY31 comments

There are ads for these GrubDash services all over the city I used to live in.

They say things like, "opt in-side!" and, "never leave your couch!"

It's gosh-darned dystopian to my eyes, but the phrases are couched as positive encouragements to improve your life.

I've seen a lot of things over the past few years which make me think about how we are living in the future which we feared more than the one which we hoped for. But these "Uber for food" apps really take the cake. And most people don't seem to care about how the sausage is made, so long as they get their prepared meal without friction.

The only change I see is efficiencies gained by sharing kitchen and driver resources. Otherwise, on the buyer’s side, nothing is changing as food delivery has existed for quite some time.

To be fair scale and penetration are significant measures. Companies might have had catered lunches from time to time but now if they don’t have on site kitchens they facilitate their employees to order from these operations.

> Otherwise, on the buyer’s side, nothing is changing as food delivery has existed for quite some time.

In some markets, delivery was nearly non-existent before the advent of these services, because delivery wasn't made use of enough for keeping your own delivery drivers to be ROI-positive.

This YouTuber tried selling Microwave meals on Deliveroo (spoiler: Deliveroo let them without inspection, and someone bought it!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k47u9tduwb8

This is great. From the video, a Deliveroo representative states that the "hygiene inspection" is not a blocker for the "Italian Stallion" to begin accepting orders. That is flabbergasting.

> https://youtu.be/k47u9tduwb8?t=128

Every day of your life, you come into contact with potentially dangerous situations.

Starbucks doesn't vet their customers before they walk in to do heroin in the bathroom.

Rental car companies don't meticulously check every piece of equipment on that car before you drive it 70mph down mountain roads.

I wish it were different. But right now the responsibility is with the user.

Clicks through EULAs without reading

Less morbidly/cynically, I wonder if this business model could extend to, say, the little old lady who likes baking pies and wouldn't mind some extra dough for her dough?

There's already this sort of market popping up on e.g. Facebook, but it revolves around pickup instead of delivery; combine it with a delivery network like those provided by these food delivery apps and you've got a killer recipe (pun intended) for one hell of a business model.

I'd imagine the big hurdle would be health code compliance, though.

Its not going to be little old ladies selling pies doing the vast majority of business on a platform like that.

Well yeah, obviously. But they don't need to be the vast majority of business on the platform. They just need to be on the platform in the first place.

There was a big push in California over the past few years to build out regulatory structure for this. They even passed a bill [0] (NPR article) to enable it -- though they explicitly carved out third party delivery services.

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/01/17/685626391/se...

Honestly, more states need cottage food laws. I know Washington and Idaho, and minosotta for instance have what are called cottage food laws to allow such food. Certainly, other states I am missing, but I think that more states should have them.

Less Strict (Paper work not required but recommended) https://cdhd.idaho.gov/pdfs/food/CottageFoodsFAQ.pdf

Paper Work Still Required https://agr.wa.gov/departments/food-safety/food-safety/cotta...

-Edit- I do find it funny that the NPR article calls the bill "the first of its kind in the country". Washington (although much stricter than other states), and Idaho have allowed it for quite some time. Idaho even longer before being formally codified.

I think the distinction in California was that they are trying to broaden the definition of cottage foods. The Idaho link you gave is similar to what California had before -- generally non-perishable, temperature-safe foods (bread, jam, nut mixes, etc). California has allowed those for years. The new law was an attempt to broaden what home cooks could prepare and sell.

I just looked at the text of the bill you mentioned and yea it does go much further.

Although, it appears to allow third party websites and apps to process sales. Although such services must keep track of food safety complaints for home kitchen and if more than three report them.

However, there are restrictions on who can deliver food. Aka only family members or employee of the operation. So that pretty much makes someone operating as such unable to use delivery serivces。

Although, i dont see anything stopping a bread baker or some who produces low risk food from using such services.

also not legal advice.

Related from 3 weeks ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21722814

Ghost kitchens are nothing new, because prepared meals that cannot be bought from the kitchen by retail consumers predate the "internet age". For instance, who does the article author think produces airline food?

The legal version of this is called a commissary kitchen (see: https://www.webstaurantstore.com/article/259/commissary-kitc... )

They have been around for a long time. Not every commercial kitchen is open to the public on a day to day basis, some aren't open to the public at all (airline food).

Retail space is expensive, because it is designed to attract foot traffic (or car traffic). If your not trying to accommodate the general public (seating is an expensive use of square footage), you could save a LOT of money.

I suspect that the placement and use of commissary kitchens is going to be a big step in the "food truck" movement. If you can be "mobile" and do "delivery" it poses a great way to "grow" your business.

I've seen these all over delivery websites in SF. I've so far refused to order because a) I can't look up multiple review sources to get a feel for their quality/reputation and b) I don't know their physical location, which matters a lot for delivery times and freshness in a congested city like SF.

The idea of ghost kitchens is that they’re located near you. The same “restaurant” may have multiple ghost kitchens they operate inside of.

But that makes it difficult to find fair reviews, different kitchens might produce different quality food.

Take your idea here a step further and realise that even reviews can't prepare you for when the line cook is having a shitty day. Every plate that comes out of a kitchen is different. When two different locations are using the same technique and the same ingredients, there's not some magical quality about the different location that is going to alter the quality of the food.

Unless it's a steakhouse that specialises in dry aged steaks.

Then there might be something in the air.

I mean, the quality of the restaurant is control in how their staff functions too. Yes there is always a chance for a mistake but higher end restaurants have (hopefully) better staff that do a better job.

I believe Michelin Stars reviewers have to visit a restaurant multiple times and rate on consistency for that reason (though this is not captured in Yelp reviews or google reviews)

On Uber Eats in SF I recently noticed two chicken restaurants with very similar names operating at the same address. I assume these are ghost kitchens. Screenshots: https://twitter.com/baddox/status/1207786177119444992

I like how different their ratings are.

For anyone interested in the myriad of terms, here's a good overview: https://thespoon.tech/market-map-ghost-kitchens-in-2019/?mc_...

Article is paywalled, so I can't dig into what they're saying, but the truth is ghost/commissary kitchens are going to be hugely impactful. For decades, commissary kitchens were used for high-density cities like NYC & Chicago, since real estate is a premium and it's easier to do food prep somewhere cheaper beforehand and then have workers just assemble meals day of.

Deliveroo is ahead of the curve on this in EU. Obviously, like people mentioned, a lot of tough problems to solve at scale (health issues, namely), but if they do it well they might be able to build a similar model in the US or elsewhere. Uber is also investing strongly in commissary kitchens, as well as Travis building Cloud Kitchens.

The efficiencies gained from commissary kitchens are very similar to efficiencies you see from hawker stalls & local markets around East, Southeast, and South Asia. There you can get great food at a fraction of the cost you'd pay elsewhere. It's so cheap that some people never cook (this is esp. common in China, I believe). Or, they buy mostly-assembled foods, and then do just enough prep to serve it at home.

Ultimately, the food that we'd get would be better, because restaurants will stop caring about running a retail location and just care about making great food. Restaurant branding/marketing will become more important too.

Isn't Zuul the gatekeeper?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Ghostbusters_character...

I can't imagine the choice of name was unintentional.

These services are currently highly subsidized by venture capital. I wonder what happens when these services have to make a profit.

GrubHub & Uber are both public companies at this point. So at the minimum, they're subsidized by those who buy their stock, but clearly they're reinvesting revenue into the business.

I’ll bet they don’t even know what “farm-to-table” means.

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