Ever ordered from three “different” restaurants and gotten the same fries, same sticker, same address? This episode of Marginally Better digs into the ghost-kitchen gold rush—and the trust crisis it sparked. Joe Taylor, Jr. unpacks how virtual brands multiplied behind a single line, why customers feel duped when the story doesn’t match the kitchen, and how even big chains are retreating from the experiment. Then we spotlight a better model—radically transparent, food-hall-style operators like Wonder—and share practical signals consumers (and operators) can use to rebuild authenticity. If convenience killed connection, here’s how to bring it back.
Episode Links:
- San Francisco Pizzeria Virtual Brands on DoorDash
- Burger Shop Revealed as Ghost Kitchen for 17 Restaurants
- News.com.au – Oporto’s Dark Kitchens Revealed
- Multiple Menus and Brands, One Restaurant Kitchen
- Marc Lore’s Wonder is Reinventing the Meal
- How Wonder Differentiates from Food Hall Concepts
- The Insatiable Billionaire Building the Amazon of Food Delivery
- How Wonder Became a Food Delivery Super App
- A Billionaire-Backed Food Hall Launches in DC
- Wonder Opens Inside Walmart
- Will Marc Lore’s Ghost Kitchen Concept Work Inside Walmart?
- Why Ghost Kitchens Failed to Sustain Their Hype
- Everything You Need to Know About Cloud Kitchens
- Ghost Kitchens and the Restaurant Industry
- The Problem with the Ghost Kitchen Business Model
- Why Do Some Nice Restaurants Use Different Names?
- Avoiding Virtual Restaurants on DoorDash Master List
- I’ve Launched 4 Ghost Kitchen IPs
- How Ghost Kitchens Market Themselves Without Physical Locations
Transcript:
[00:00:00] Announcer: From the global headquarters of Johns and Taylor in beautiful New Jersey, it’s Marginally Better. Here’s your host, Joe Taylor, Jr.
[00:00:11] Joe Taylor, Jr.: On the show this week, imagine ordering from what you think are 15 different restaurants, only to discover they’re all the same kitchen with different names. In San Francisco, one pizzeria reportedly operates over 70 virtual brands on DoorDash. Seventy. From one kitchen.
[00:00:26] We’ll explore how the ghost kitchen gold rush turned into a trust catastrophe, why customers feel betrayed when they discover their favorite “restaurant” doesn’t exist, and what happens when convenience completely disconnects from authenticity.
[00:00:41] Plus, I’ll tell you about the burger shop that got caught red-handed running 17 fake restaurants, and why some of the biggest chains in America are quietly shutting down their virtual experiments.
[00:00:56] That’s all coming up after the break on Marginally Better.
[00:01:04] Welcome to Marginally Better, a show about business, innovation, and the American economy. I’m Joe Taylor Jr.
Here’s a question: When is a restaurant not a restaurant? When it’s a ghost.
Business Insider dropped a bombshell earlier this year about a single San Francisco pizzeria at 1338 Polk Street. According to their reporting, this one kitchen operates dozens of virtual brands on DoorDash. We’re talking pasta concepts, wing joints, halal restaurants, dessert shops – all coming from the same pizza ovens and fryers.
The sheer scale is staggering. While I couldn’t independently verify the exact count of 70 brands that’s been widely reported, what’s documented is already mind-bending. Customers think they’re supporting diverse local businesses. In reality? They’re all ordering from the same place.
One Reddit user discovered this the hard way, as documented in multiple threads about virtual restaurants. They ordered from three different “restaurants” over a week – different cuisines, different price points – and noticed the packaging looked suspiciously similar. The delivery driver? Same guy each time. The address on the receipt? Identical.
“I felt like I’d been scammed,” they wrote. “Not because the food was bad, but because I thought I was trying different places.”
But if you want to see how this really implodes, look at Melbourne, Australia. The New York Post reported on a burger shop called “Burgur” – yes, spelled B-U-R-G-U-R – that was secretly operating as 17 different restaurants on Uber Eats.
The names were deliberately confusing. Some appeared AI-generated. Customers ordering from “Brooklyn Bangers” or “Burger Spot” or “Flaming Good Burgers” had no idea they were all the same kitchen.
When local media exposed this, the backlash was swift. Customers flooded social media with complaints about feeling “stung” and “deceived.” One Melbourne resident told reporters they’d been ordering from what they thought were different burger joints for months, trying to support variety in their neighborhood. Turns out, there was no variety at all.
Even major chains got caught up in the virtual brand fever. News.com.au revealed that Oporto, a popular Australian fast-food chain, secretly launched “Basted Wings & Burgers” as a virtual brand. The food was largely identical to Oporto’s regular menu, just with different names and packaging.
Customers had no idea. When the connection was revealed, people felt manipulated. As one customer put it in the coverage: “If I wanted Oporto, I would have ordered Oporto.”
Wisk.ai’s analysis of the ghost kitchen industry documents what happened when Chili’s launched “It’s Just Wings” as a virtual brand. The concept seemed brilliant – use existing kitchen capacity to sell wings online under a different name.
The reality? Kitchens couldn’t handle it. Cooks trying to juggle dine-in Chili’s orders while simultaneously preparing virtual wings orders created chaos. Quality suffered. Wait times exploded. Both the real restaurant and the virtual one disappointed customers.
The lesson was clear: Just because you can run multiple brands from one kitchen doesn’t mean you should.
What all these stories reveal is something deeper than operational challenges. It’s about trust. When customers discover they’ve been ordering from virtual brands, they don’t just feel confused – they feel betrayed.
As documented across multiple Reddit threads and consumer forums, people are now actively trying to identify and avoid ghost kitchens. They’re creating lists, sharing detective work, looking for tells like identical addresses or suspiciously similar menus.
The virtual brand explosion promised to revolutionize food delivery. Instead, it’s teaching customers to be suspicious of every new restaurant they see online. And once that trust is broken? Good luck getting it back.
After the break, how restaurant apps accidentally broke the restaurant business. It’s Marginally Better.
It’s Marginally Better, I’m Joe Taylor Jr.
Picture a food lover in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. They’ve spent years getting to know every hole-in-the-wall, every family-run spot, every hidden gem. So when delivery apps started showing dozens of new options during the pandemic, they were thrilled.
“Nonna’s Kitchen” for authentic Italian. “Seoul Food” for Korean fusion. “The Melt Down” for gourmet grilled cheese. Over six months, they ordered from maybe 30 different “restaurants,” carefully rating each one, building a mental map of the neighborhood’s evolving food scene.
Then came the revelation that changed everything.
According to Reddit posts documented across multiple forums, customers started noticing patterns. Same delivery drivers for different restaurants. Identical packaging with different stickers. Receipts showing the same address – 1338 Polk Street – for what appeared to be completely different cuisines.
One Reddit user wrote about their discovery process: “I ordered from three different ‘restaurants’ over a week – different cuisines, different price points. The packaging looked suspiciously similar. The delivery driver? Same guy each time. The address on the receipt? Identical.”
These stories, documented by Business Insider and corroborated across consumer forums, represent thousands of similar discoveries happening across the country.
Customers who dug deeper made shocking discoveries. That “authentic” Italian place? It was run by the same pizza shop that also operated a Thai restaurant, a breakfast joint, and a cookie delivery service. None of them existed beyond a name on an app and a slightly modified menu.
The scope was staggering. According to reporting by Wisk.ai and The Food Corridor, some ghost kitchen facilities house 20 or more virtual brands. CloudKitchens, founded by former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, operates facilities where dozens of brands pump out food with no storefronts, no dining rooms, no physical presence at all.
But this isn’t just about consumer confusion. There’s a human story here that often gets lost.
Real restaurant owners with 15-year histories found themselves competing not just with other authentic restaurants, but with virtual brands that could undercut their prices because they had no dining room rent, no ambiance to maintain, no community to serve.
Consider the Korean restaurants in San Francisco’s Richmond district. Family-run establishments with grandmother’s kimchi recipes and seasonal banchan selections. Regular customers who’d become friends over the years. These businesses suddenly faced competition from “Seoul Food” and similar virtual brands – operations run out of commissary kitchens by operators who’d never been to Korea, using bulk-purchased kimchi and pre-made sauces. But on the apps, they looked just as legitimate as 15-year-old establishments.
By 2023, many of these real restaurants had to close. The virtual brands hadn’t just taken their customers – they’d made it impossible for customers to distinguish between a restaurant with history and heart, and a name on an app.
The operational challenges documented by multiple sources tell another part of the story. When you’re running multiple virtual brands from one kitchen, something has to give.
A cook at one multi-brand kitchen, speaking anonymously to Eater, described the chaos: “I’m making Thai curry one minute, Nashville hot chicken the next, then switching to pasta. There’s no specialization, no expertise. It’s just throwing different sauces on the same ingredients and calling it different cuisines.”
The food safety implications worried health inspectors too. As reported by WRAL in North Carolina, health departments struggled to regulate operations where one kitchen might be preparing 15 different menus with varying allergen profiles and dietary restrictions.
But perhaps the most insidious part of this story is how the technology platforms themselves encouraged this proliferation.
According to analysis by Revolution Ordinance and discussions on Black Hat World forums, delivery apps’ algorithms reward new restaurants with promotional placement. So instead of improving one brand, operators learned to launch new ones constantly.
A virtual brand consultant, quoted in industry forums, explained the playbook: “Launch a brand, ride the new restaurant boost for 3-4 weeks, then launch another. By the time customers catch on that ‘Artisan Burgers’ has quality issues, you’ve already moved them to ‘Craft Burger Co.'”
The platforms knew this was happening. But as long as they got their commission, did it matter if customers were confused?
By mid-2024, the cracks were showing everywhere. According to Wisk.ai’s industry analysis, major virtual brand operators started shutting down. Kitchen United closed several locations. Reef Technology, which operated ghost kitchens in parking lots, faced regulatory crackdowns and customer complaints.
Even successful virtual brands struggled. MrBeast Burger, launched by the YouTube star, faced quality control nightmares when random ghost kitchens couldn’t consistently replicate the branded experience. Customers expecting a celebrity-endorsed meal got whatever the local ghost kitchen threw together.
The trust erosion was measurable. Surveys cited by industry analysts showed that once customers discovered a restaurant was virtual, their likelihood of reordering dropped by over 40%.
What happened next was documented across Reddit forums and social media. Customers started deleting delivery apps entirely.
“I started walking the neighborhood again,” one San Francisco resident wrote in a Reddit post that resonated with thousands. “Meeting the actual owners. Seeing the actual kitchens. Yeah, it’s less convenient. But at least I know my money is going to real people running real businesses.”
Another user started a blog documenting actual neighborhood restaurants. No virtual brands allowed. Each entry included a photo of the physical storefront, the owner’s story, what makes them unique. It was slower, more work, less convenient.
But it was real. And after months of ordering from ghosts, real felt revolutionary.
The ghost kitchen industry promised to democratize food service, to let anyone become a restaurateur with just a kitchen and an internet connection. Instead, it created a race to the bottom where authenticity became a liability and confusion became a business model.
Because here’s what the industry forgot: Restaurants aren’t just about food. They’re about connection, community, and trust. And you can’t virtual-brand your way to any of those things.
After the break, what’s the right way to run a ghost kitchen? It’s Marginally Better.
It’s Marginally Better, I’m Joe Taylor Jr.
So here’s the thing: Not everyone operating multiple restaurant brands from one kitchen is trying to deceive you. Some are doing the exact opposite – being radically transparent about what they are.
Enter Marc Lore, the billionaire who sold Jet.com to Walmart for $3.3 billion. His latest venture, Wonder, operates up to 30 restaurant brands from single locations. Sound familiar? But here’s the difference: They tell you exactly what they’re doing.
As Restaurant Business reported, Wonder calls itself “a new kind of food hall.” Not 30 different restaurants. A food hall. Right there on the door. No deception, no fake addresses, no made-up origin stories.
When you walk into a Wonder location – and yes, you can actually walk in — I have visited the one that opened a few months ago near our house in New Jersey – you see one very busy, very organized kitchen producing food from Bobby Flay Steak, Streetbird by Marcus Samuelsson, and Tejas Barbecue. The company owns or licenses all these brands. They’re upfront about it.
There are some kitchen tricks at work in here, a lot of sous-vide reheating of ingredients that were prepared at centralized commissary kitchens — but, you can watch it all and even talk to the cooks working hard to deliver a great product based on tested recipes.
Daniel Shlossman, Wonder’s chief growth and marketing officer, told Nation’s Restaurant News something revealing: “The big difference is there’s vertical integration here. We own every step of this, including – and I think this is the most important piece – the brands.”
Fortune documented Wonder’s rapid expansion – 39 locations and counting, with plans for 90 by year’s end. They just opened inside Walmart stores. They acquired Grubhub for $650 million. José Andrés sits on their board.
But here’s what matters: Customers know what they’re getting. When the Washingtonian covered Wonder’s DC launch, they didn’t expose a secret operation. Wonder invited them in, showed them the kitchen, explained exactly how 21 different restaurant concepts operate under one roof.
The reaction? People love it. According to Fast Company, Wonder locations become profitable shortly after opening. Why? Because when you’re transparent about variety coming from one kitchen, it becomes a feature, not a bug.
As Lore told Fortune: “When you’re making decisions about delivery or where to eat, you’re negotiating with your family or your friends to say, ‘OK, what do you want to eat?’ With Wonder, everyone can get what they want.”
This brings us to what nobody talks about when they order from “Pasquale’s Authentic Pizzeria” or “Bangkok Street Kitchen” on their apps – the stories these fake restaurants tell.
Every virtual brand comes with a fabricated narrative. “Family recipes since 1952.” “Inspired by street vendors in Thailand.” “Grandma’s secret sauce.” According to discussions on Black Hat World marketing forums, there’s actually a whole industry of copywriters specializing in fake restaurant backstories.
One copywriter, posting anonymously, shared their process: “I can create a three-generation Italian restaurant history in 20 minutes. Throw in some black-and-white photos from stock photography sites, mention nonna’s Sunday gravy, and boom – authenticity.”
It’s like we’ve entered the uncanny valley of dining. Everything looks right on the surface – professional photos, compelling descriptions, five-star reviews. But something feels off. There’s no there there.
The real winners in all this chaos? Two groups: transparent multi-brand operators like Wonder who don’t hide what they are, and actual restaurants that can prove they exist.
Many of those San Francisco Korean restaurant owners who had to close their dining rooms during the pandemic found new life as food trucks. Now customers can see them, talk to them, watch them cook. Lines stretch around the block.
“People literally take selfies with my truck,” one food truck owner told local media. “They’re so happy to find something real.”
Meanwhile, Wonder is proving you can run multiple brands successfully if you’re honest about it. As one analyst noted in RetailWire’s coverage: “Wonder promises to bring more transparency to the ghost kitchen model with its physical locations.”
But here’s what keeps me wondering about this whole situation. If it’s so easy to fake a restaurant – to create a compelling brand, a convincing backstory, even decent food from a commissary kitchen – what does that say about how we value authenticity?
Maybe the real catastrophe isn’t that ghost kitchens exist. It’s that for a while there, we couldn’t tell the difference. Or worse, we could tell, but convenience mattered more than connection.
The success of Wonder suggests something hopeful: When given a choice between deceptive virtual brands and transparent multi-brand operations, customers choose transparency. They don’t mind multiple restaurants from one kitchen. They mind being lied to.
The lesson for operators is simple: You can virtualize the kitchen, but you can’t virtualize trust. Wonder gets this. They’re not pretending to be 30 different family restaurants with fabricated histories. They’re a food hall, a platform, a new model entirely. And they’re succeeding precisely because they’re not pretending to be something they’re not.
Next time you order delivery, ask yourself: Am I ordering from someone’s dream, someone’s deception, or someone’s honest innovation? Because in the end, transparency might be the only ingredient that really matters.
Joe Taylor Jr.: That’s our show for today. Whether you’re running a real restaurant, a virtual empire, or a transparent food hall, remember: Customers aren’t just buying food. They’re buying trust. Break that trust, and no amount of creative branding will bring them back. But be honest about what you are? You might just build the next billion-dollar food platform.
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If you want to get behind-the-scenes notes from me and the rest of the team, go to marginallybettershow.com or follow the link in our show notes.
Marginally Better is a Calufrax radio production. Our producer is Nicole Hubbard with research by Connie Evans.
I’m Joe Taylor, Jr.
Joe Taylor Jr.
After a decade in broadcast media, Joe developed early online platforms for NPR, PBS, and AOL. Today, he helps our clients tell compelling brand stories through audio, visuals, and software.