Wait.

These are the same fake names that the deli a block from me in Brooklyn NYC uses. Literally exactly the same.

That’s sort of fascinating. I’m realizing it just be some kind of software or vendor they’re all using to set up this ghost kitchen explosion.

I wonder if there’s a clever vendor out there shipping them some kind of device to keep track of all this stuff, complete with menus and an instruction guide or something.

Or, of course, the platforms themselves.

That's really interesting... Do the actual real-life restaurants appear related?

I just realized this screenshot is actually from GrubHub which I don't use anymore, so I'm not able to go back and check for further details.

My examples are from GrubHub too.

Behold: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Agrubhub.com+%22108+ja...

Wow, a google search for site:grubhub.com "b*tch" reveals a lot more of them.

Yeah, not USA example but there are more companies like it: https://www.kitopi.com/our-story

Where I live (Spain), delivery restaurants have also become a total clusterfuck.

There are thousands of options which are barely undistinguishable from one another - like those cheap Chinese brands that flood many product categories on Amazon. You'll occasionally find a name that stands out, like the ones you've posted, along the lines of "Thunderfuck Porn Burgers". But they don't entice me to order, since whatever the brand values being transmitted are, they are not what I'm looking for in a restaurant.

The result is that you end up ordering from the same few oldies but goodies. Occasionally, once upon a moon, a friend will tell you about a new restaurant to expand your horizons. Some of these, while good, might not stand out in this sea of shit and end up closing, so you revert back to the oldies but goodies. And so it goes.

The corollary is that this a shit business.

I wonder how long it'll be until I can order a burger from LAKPARCX Hamburgers with【1/4 pounds paty】, 【Nutritient cheese for whole family】, 【Come with choice of side】, 【Savor tasty meal】?

They’re driven by search too, so my guess is, not long!

Needs 3x more location keyword stuffing...

Soon it will be like Amazon's search.

Customer: "I would like a burger. What burger restaurants are delivering to me?"

App: "Here's a Mexican restaurant."

Customer: "I said, "HAMBURGER RESTAURANT", not Mexican"

App: "Don't be a wimp. You know you want tacos."

Nailed it.

I'm in a small town just outside Barcelona and although it's not widespread because we don't have many restaurants here there is one place which does this which is particularly frustrating...

One restaurant which serves burgers, tacos and pizza. None of it particularly great but nice if you're feeling lazy. Problem is they split across three brands on Glovo for each food category even though it all comes from the same place.

If one of us feels like burger and the other fancies tacos you gotta pay two deliveries. That is unless you pay for a subscription of course. Someone mentioned elsewhere in this thread that Doordash officially endorses these "virtual restaurants". I wouldn't be surprised if they like the idea that it might push people to premium subscriptions to access free delivery so they get a diversity of food options.

Maybe we're expecting them to solve a different problem than they're built for.

As far as I can tell, the point of a delivery platform is to provide delivery services in a market where they traditionally didn't exist.

There's no claim they will improve the discovery experience. In fact, by obfuscating where you're actually ordering from-- making it less obvious "Oh, that's the place on Sixth where we all got food poisoning, let's not go back", they can further pollute it.

I could see saying "use the service, I want to order from Golden Lucky Dragon Palace, but can't be bothered to drive there myself", but saying "let's browse and hope to get lucky" is no better than opening the Yellow Pages to the restaurant section and selecting at random.

I haven't seen that (yet) in France. All the referenced restaurants are real places. This being said my city simply has too many places with a lot of them outright bad. Almost all the good restaurants are on location only and don't deliver. I find myself using TheFork a lot more than Über Eats nowadays.

I was talking about Madrid, which is by far the largest city. I'm in Bilbao right now which is fairly large (metropolitan area or "Gran Bilbao" has 850k pop.) and the virtual kitchen fever hasn't taken off yet either.

That name would make me order at least once if there were no ratings to decide off of.

Is this even legal? In the country where i live you need to first register a business and can't make up funny names out of your mind directly into DoorDash

Fictitious names aka trade names aka doing business as aka d/b/a is a thing and it's legal. But generally to be legal it needs to be filed with the state or local government (or whatever). Some places in the US also require a notice in the newspaper as well.

Weird, I've seen some of those exact names on delivery apps in Minneapolis.

Ghost kitchen chain?

Yep, there are 2 kinds of ghost kitchens I've seen:

1. Ones that pretend to be a real brand name but serve out of an unrelated restaurant's kitchen

2. Ones that are 100% fake chains made up just for delivery apps that are used across the country

Before I order on apps I first google for the name to make sure they have a real physical location in my city and it's not a scam (yes, I believe all ghost kitchens are scams).

I think that was just the restaurant owner having fun while making sure every part of their menu showed up as a restaurant search result

I guess if you ordered from "deli belli" you can't do a chargeback for food poisoning.

Are you sure that’s not just all ghost kitchens? Or maybe a parking lot for food trucks?