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Its a ghost kitchen. It isn't 30 restaurants, its one restaurant with 30 brands.

This idea was tried years ago (they'd claim to be the first) by a company based out of Indianapolis named Clustertruck (https://www.clustertruck.com/); though their branding was more "one restaurant, 30 food truck brands". The aim was: you can order a bunch of stuff, the software in the kitchens times it to all come out at the same time, and ETAs the driver to pick it up for delivery.

The company is still around but isn't all that successful. They split the software portion into a second company, closed down a bunch of kitchens, raised prices, etc. I think the reality that hit them was: It really doesn't matter all that much that you can order tacos and pasta all in one order, except for large parties but that's an uncommon situation. The genre of food matters less than the specific food being ordered (e.g. I don't just want a burger, i want a five guys burger). Additionally, the food might have usually been delivered at a higher quality than a typical Uber Eats/etc delivery, but that's still a distance away from restaurant quality; but the prices were obviously higher than eating at a restaurant.

Uber Eats/etc are barely successful, and the only reason they can find that success is because they don't have to manage all the typically lossy parts of food delivery (restaurants & the drivers). Gig apps are good businesses because they avoid this vertical integration: No depreciating assets, little real estate, low competition, no worry about managing minimum wage workers, no health inspections, no stoves breaking down, just some software engineers and marketing (I'm simplifying but you get my gist). Why anyone would think vertically integrating something involving a restaurant is a good idea is, well, crazy. Even ghost kitchens on the typical range of delivery apps are stupid; oh sure your startup is one of the most classically unprofitable kinds of businesses on the planet, I bet that'll survive when interest rates rise.






I was in Bloomington for college and ordered from ClusterTruck multiple times. I did think the food was notably more fresh than other delivery services.

Uber Eats in the USA, yes, it's more hands off in terms of gig workers. In the UK and Germany and many other countries though, there have been many court rulings to essentially ban gig-working and enforce employee protections.

What does a ban on gig working look like?



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