
Our Ghost Kitchen Future - mitchbob
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/our-ghost-kitchen-future
======
akavi
Is it just me, or does Reef sound like nearly pure regulatory arbitrage of the
screwed up zoning laws in American cities?

Ie, zoning oversupplies parking spaces relative to commercial real estate, and
so if you can put your business in a "van" and "park" it, you get to use land
for cheap.

The article alludes to this ("Parking lots have long been attractive sites for
urban designers, many of whom see them as wasteful, inefficient land banks."),
but doesn't quite draw the connection.

~~~
totetsu
It sounds like a twisted timeline version of the 1960s Japanese metabolism
city planning movement. [https://thetokyofiles.com/2011/12/15/not-like-a-
cancer-grows...](https://thetokyofiles.com/2011/12/15/not-like-a-cancer-grows-
artistic-expression-as-alternative-success-narrative/)

------
supernova87a
Small restaurants have trouble surviving in the US because of the sheer _cost_
of trying an experiment, or sustaining even a small kitchen. There are just so
many regulatory (local, really badly managed, even corrupt) hurdles, and
investments required. It practically incentivizes restaurants to be big
corporations (and sell liquor) in order to survive.

If you look at places that have less regulation (or governments which have
made this a more conscious priority) or the rent/land ownership structure is
different, there are tons of little mom-pop restaurants that can survive
situations like this. I'm all for regulation -- when necessary -- but even I
can see that local licensing (as Obama administration acknowledged) is
hindering affordability of industries where regulation has come to serve only
local interests.

Look to Southeast Asia, even some parts of Europe. Hole in the wall
restaurants can make it, because rent is cheap, they don't have city
inspectors coming to ding you on fire supression equipment that is 2 inches
out of spec. (Also, they don't have waiters and hosts other than the owners)
There are food centers set up to foster small restaurants all located together
in a high demand area, where the infrastructure is shared and standardized. In
Italy, Spain -- restaurants run for generations in corners of small apartment
blocks and aren't in fear of getting evicted for a chain.

If we want our cities to look like and cultivate a certain desireable feature,
we need to put active work into fixing the things that disincentivize it in
small daily doses. Otherwise it's crappy Panera Breads for everyone.

~~~
blaser-waffle
> Look to Southeast Asia, even some parts of Europe. Hole in the wall
> restaurants can make it, because rent is cheap, they don't have city
> inspectors coming to ding you on fire supression equipment that is 2 inches
> out of spec. (Also, they don't have waiters and hosts other than the owners)
> There are food centers set up to foster small restaurants all located
> together in a high demand area, where the infrastructure is shared and
> standardized. In Italy, Spain -- restaurants run for generations in corners
> of small apartment blocks and aren't in fear of getting evicted for a chain.

This is because food is cheap, salaries are cheap, and no one is reporting
these guys for selling you rat that's labelled as chicken.

Plus, on average, most small businesses fail in ~5 years, not just restaurants
(though they tend to fail extra hard).

~~~
wenc
> no one is reporting these guys for selling you rat that's labelled as
> chicken.

This seems unnecessarily hyperbolic and maligning of Southeast Asians. Some of
the best food in the world is in South East Asia, and even in less regulated
places, no one serves inedible food. Market forces work even those places, and
food places that are bad will naturally fail.

------
ArmandGrillet
Reef's website shows anything but where the food is actually cooked, a bunch
of stock pictures and unknown-but-cutely-named brands related to comfy food.

Restaurants have strict sanitary rules, what are the ones for parking-based-
kitchens? From the article and the company's website, Reef looks like a
business making the parking spot next to your flat a source of nuisances (the
smell of frying out, the noise of a kitchen) while offering yet another way to
make people pay a premium on warmed up frozen food.

------
sradman
This is about startup Reef Technology [1] that provides software and logistics
for standing-up food preparation/pickup in locations such as parking lots that
lack the required utilities:

> The Power of Proximity™.... We are creating a network of neighborhood hubs
> to bring you the goods and services you want, faster than ever before.

[1] [https://reeftechnology.com/](https://reeftechnology.com/)

------
ausbah
> It now manages 1.3 million parking spaces in forty-five hundred locations.

>But, for now, customers may find themselves paying a premium for meals
similar to those found at a fast-food restaurant, or in a supermarket freezer.

>Reef’s kitchens are registered as mobile food facilities, which tend to have
fewer permitting requirements.

>The branding and food are real, but the restaurants do not exist elsewhere in
the physical world.

I can't say I'm exactly thrilled about another "disrupting" another couple of
industries. The take up parking and seemingly tiptoe around regulations only
to provide mediocre cookie cutter dishes via fake restaurants? I'll have to
pass.

~~~
cactus2093
Wow I could not disagree more. Unlike parking spaces, this is at least
providing some positive value to a city.

And what makes these fake restaurants? These are cheap spaces where
entrepreneurial chefs who could never afford to start a full restaurant can
open a delivery restaurant and start selling food quickly. They can still
develop a name and a brand for themselves via delivery just like any
restaurant could. Why does it have to be mediocre food? Surely some amazing
food will come out of spaces like this.

~~~
biggidywiggidy
Amazing food will come out of your kitchen when you learn to cook. Youtube
will teach you how.

~~~
Spivak
But this misses the point of getting food for delivery. If cooking is one of
your hobbies you will very quickly be able make food better than any mid-tier
restaurant in your city (i.e. the kind of place you would probably order take-
out from). It's honestly not that big of an accomplishment because you have so
many advantages over line cooks when you're just cooking for yourself / your
family.

Once you're at that point getting take-out isn't about getting better food for
a special occasion, it's paying for something better than frozen that you
don't have to cook. Ordering take-out is a function of how tired I am, not the
quality of food I want.

------
joe5150
had an experience this spring with picking up Thai food from a Chinese
restaurant which is also home to:

    
    
      - Chinese Yum! Yum!
      - Szechwings
      - Kuri Sashimi Bowls
      - Send Noods Pho
      - Veggie Stir Fry House
      - Sushi Sendai
      - Panang Panang! Thai Curry
      - Save the Fish Vegetarian Sushi
      - Fire Ass Thai
    

and so on. at least 25 restaurants by my count.

I don't know if I believe that this is a problem (beyond the usual kinds of
problems in restaurants) and I'm mostly curious about how the logistics are
managed. is there a wall of iPads so each "restaurant" front gets all its own
orders on one? does whatever company that facilitates this kind of thing
provide a solution where manifold orders can come in on a more traditional
kitchen display system with some flag added for which "restaurant" it belongs
to?

making the various menus work doesn't seem like as big of a challenge: the
majority of the client restaurants are offering whole subsets of the host
restaurant's menu or food easily reconstructed from those items.

~~~
hahamrfunnyguy
It's funny you say that because making the various menu items seems like the
biggest challenge in my view.

In my experience, a restaurant with a large menu is a sure sign of mediocre
food. It's like when you order Thai cuisine at a Chinese restaurant - you end
up getting sweet and spicy Chinese food.

When you have so many menu items, how do you ensure consistency and train
cooks how to prepare the recipes?

~~~
mathattack
The long term answer is likely automation. (Same answer as Lyft and Uber)

My guess is short term it’s a matter of checklists with largely common
underlying ingredients. Or perhaps everything is prepackaged and unfrozen upon
order. (The larger the menu, the more likely the former)

~~~
matthewdgreen
We already have this automation. You can find it in the pre-packaged entrees
section of your grocery store’s freezer aisle. The problem is that outside of
a few limited categories, most people find frozen pre-prepared food to be
unsatisfactory when compared to fresh food. So the concern is that automation
may just mean “supermarket-quality food becomes the norm, while all the real
restaurants go out of business”.

~~~
mixedCase
So that would mean people prefer lower quality food for lower prices over mid-
to-high quality food at higher prices, and society gets what it wants. Win-
win.

If there's demand for higher quality food, then I'm confident the doomsday
scenario of "all the real restaurants go out of business" is not going to
happen. We just might have to wait a little longer for delivery or travel a
few more minutes to get to such a place.

~~~
matthewdgreen
If you think that "people prefer lower quality food for lower prices" ==
"society gets what it wants, win-win", I suggest you take a look at any 1970s
cookbook. This country spent years wiping out local bakeries and butchers and
replacing them with factory foods. It was a dire time, and we're lucky today
to have so many better options.

This Twitter account gives you a fun look at what we don't have to deal with
anymore, thank god:
[https://twitter.com/70s_party?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcam...](https://twitter.com/70s_party?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)

ETA: In case this isn't clear, what I'm trying to say is that sometimes
powerful economic forces can provide us with _deeply_ suboptimal results. It
would be an objectively bad thing if every good pizza place in my city went
out of business and got replaced with Freschetta. But it really could happen.

~~~
mixedCase
> It would be an objectively bad thing if every good pizza place in my city
> went out of business and got replaced with Freschetta

That would just mean that the people _prefer_ Freschetta. It's not like it's
going to replace every single good pizza place by getting little to nobody's
business, in your scenario where it replaces _all_ restaurants it's going to
get _all_ the business because _everyone_ wants lower priced shitty frozen
pizza; and that's why these thought experiments are a stretch.

As long as there's still people willing to pay more for a better pizza, there
will still be kitchens providing them, and if no one's doing it, that is your
cue to open or invest in one and get some of that business yourself.

------
totetsu
recent jwz

>That "Cloud Kitchens" enterprise is a dystopian horror show, too. It means
that Kalanick and the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund own the first part of
restaurant take-out -- the menu and online ordering; they own the third part
-- delivery; and now they also own the second part -- actually making the
food. The "restaurant", at that point, is just a brand logo. Their sweatshops
make the same food for everybody and paste whatever name on it. The restaurant
isn't even a franchise at that point. It's a sticker.

~~~
cactus2093
You might have been close to making some kind of reasonable point in the first
half of this comment but then you took it to crazy town and discredited the
whole thing.

These are rental spaces, just like almost every restaurant in the world
operates out of. How is it a sweatshop or anything close to a franchise if
someone starts their own restaurant under their own brand with their own menu
and rents kitchen space to work/deliver out of?

~~~
totetsu
Sorry to be too brief. this is a quote from a blog post by jwz, former
internet person and now pizza restaurant owner, on this topic.
[https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2020/07/10.html](https://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2020/07/10.html)
The whole post might make more or less sense.

------
jt2190
> [Ari] Ojalvo, [C.E.O of Reef] cites his own experience in the restaurant
> industry... to note that opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant is high-risk
> and expensive, whereas ghost kitchens are lower-risk, offering a more
> affordable way for entrepreneurs to enter the business. In most cities,
> opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant requires a gauntlet of permits and
> inspections; restaurateurs waiting on permits might find themselves paying
> months of rent for space they aren’t yet allowed to use. Reef’s kitchens are
> registered as mobile food facilities, which tend to have fewer permitting
> requirements. Like the trailers themselves, the business details are
> configurable: Reef offers flexible staffing arrangements and short-term
> leases.

What’s interesting is that this is, in part, a response to things that aren’t
as fast as the (increasingly online) marketplace itself, like finding a
suitable storefront for a restaurant, building out a commercial kitchen, and
all of the waiting for permits and licenses, which together impose a number of
risks on a new business.

~~~
dwater
I live in a small city, pop. 250k metro area 1M, and there is a local business
news site that reports on openings, closings, and other local business news.
It's more or less standard that when they announce a new restaurant, bar, or
brewery opening the owner will state an expected opening date a month or two
in the future, and then 3-6 months later a follow up story about how they are
still 1-2 months from opening. It's almost always due to unexpected snags in
the permitting and licensing process. There are many different local
government agencies that have to sign off: zoning, permits &
inspections/building, business license, health department, ABC, the fire
marshal. And if any of those agencies requires you to make changes to the
building or systems you have to go through permits & inspections again. It's a
system that is not optimized for speed or efficiency.

------
the-dude
> In the trade publication _Parking Today_ , publisher John Van Horn
> speculated about the repercussions of ParkJockey’s ascent.

I find it hilarious there is even such a publication. Over the years I have
read about other, similar hilarious ones, but I forgot which.

Emphasis mine.

~~~
drfuchs
A few I've run into at random: BusLine Magazine, with an ad in the back for
"BarfClean! Just spray on to solidify, for easy removal!" (The ads in the
front were less lurid: "Our new seats are 32% lighter!")

And, more on-topic, Restaurateur Magazine, with an ad for "Sizzle! Paint-on
Char Marks for any meat, for that fresh-from-the-grill look!"

(Names of magazines and products approximate; but I'm sure about "BarfClean".)

~~~
mauvehaus
It's usually interesting, but sometimes not pretty to see what's going on
behind the curtain. I once saw a bottle under a sink in a restaurant: Extra
Strength Urine Remover.

Are people that bad at peeing that there's a need for urine remover in extra
as well as regular strength?!

~~~
throwanem
Have you _seen_ men?

~~~
mauvehaus
Tellingly, my wife informed me that there wasn't a bottle in the women's
restroom.

