COLUMBUS, Ohio — Your favorite delivery food spot might not be a restaurant, just a kitchen.
Ghost kitchens are popping up online and on delivery apps, and pickup drivers might be going into another established restaurant to grab your food.
“It's a digital business,” said John Barker, the president and CEO of The Ohio Restaurant and Hospitality Alliance. “You get that food delivered from a place that you think is maybe a restaurant somewhere, but it really isn't. It's just a place that has a kitchen that has all the utensils and cooking apparatus. They take the orders and they deliver them to your home or your business. And oftentimes, it's just seamless.”
The Ohio Restaurant and Hospitality Alliance represents restaurants in the Buckeye State. Barker says there are more than 24,000 eateries in Ohio. He sat down with 10TV’s Clay Gordon to discuss the business practices behind ghost kitchens, including if the branding is deceptive for consumers.
“I don't think it's deceptive. I think in most cases, people understand branding anymore. Because we love certain brands, we all might not actually say it out loud that we love brands,” said Barker. “The restaurant business, it's been tough to last two or three years with the pandemic. So for restaurants, finding ways to make a little bit more money to offset those costs is all about being a smart business person.”
Barker said a consumer might not know it, but he estimates one in every three restaurants listed on food delivery apps are ghost kitchens.
“If something comes to you, and it doesn't meet the standards of, say, the picture you saw or the video you saw of the product if it doesn't meet that standard, consumers are really good at saying, 'I'm not going back there,'” said Barker. “I think the marketplace shakes out most of that and we haven't really seen too much of that.”
One of Columbus' ghost kitchens goes by the name of Pasqually's Pizza and Wings Kitchen. The kitchen has its own boxes and menu, but if you came to pick it up, you'd find yourself at Chuck E. Cheese.
Pasqually is the chef and former drummer from the band... which has broken up at all locations except one nationwide... but the chef's brand lives on.
"We are not hiding the fact that it is a Chuck E. Cheese thing, it's still in our universe. But Pasqually's gave us the opportunity to really think about food in a different way," said Blake Johnson, senior director of brand marketing at CEC Entertainment.
Mexican restaurant Agave and Rye is known for serving up Americanized street tacos. But now a chicken restaurant is operating inside the same kitchen.
"We want it to be its own entity. We want it to grow on its own and we don't want people to come for Agave right? We want them to try something different and be able to expand their horizon," said Aaron Bachelor, general manager of Agave and Rye.
Barker says ghost kitchens still have to follow all the same requirements, licensing and food safety training. He said the Ohio Restaurant and Hospitality Alliance works with 117 health departments across the state to make sure restaurants are up to service.