I had several bad experiences with ghost kitchens (low quality food) and now I look up ay restaurant before I order from them to make sure it has a storefront. Though usually you can tell by the absurd names most ghost kitchen places use.
I’ve experienced the same thing. It makes sense. Ghost kitchens are a purely profit-motivated enterprise. Local restaurants are for-profit, but also places where hospitality, socializing, community, etc. has value. I would expect the food to reflect that.
Plus, if you’re an actual restaurant it’s a lot harder to rebrand if people don’t like what you’re doing. They’ll notice it’s the same people, the same location and a similar menu, but if you’re a ghost kitchen that gets bad reviews you can just shut down Phil’s Mouthwatering Mexican and open up Tabasco Flavour Tacos the next day.
I was extremely excited about ghost kitchens and have had been disappointed by similar experiences with them all providing low quality food. I'm still optimistic that the supply will shape itself over time and eventually a market for high quality food ghost kitchens will emerge.
This seems unlikely to me because most good chefs seem very interested in interacting with their customers - in many cases it's the one redeeming factor in an otherwise brutal industry.
interestingly there's a local startup here in Boise that is trying to pre-empt your experience. They are a ghost kitchen that also owns the logistics (delivery) the ordering software, and have hired chefs to build menus specifically targeted at being delivered and still being good.
I'm actually going to order dinner from them now as a first time user (i've been signed up for a while but now after reading this thread i'm curious what the quality is like)
There have always been a lot of those, cooking group meals, lunches for cooperation/events. It's always there, just DoorDash enabled those kitchens to take individual customers, which would have only been possible with a storefront, before the time of digital delivery service.
