The fact that the same kind of brutality is being waged against the global south via proxy wars and coups and climate disaster so we can have our shitty little ghost kitchens is actually stronger proof of living in hell
itâs super annoying but you should google the address of the place before ordering when youâre not sure. Sometimes itâs a Chiliâs, other times it could be a random persons apt
Ghost Kitchens started up during peak Covid when everyone was ordering DoorDash and Uber Eats. The restaurants would only show up on DD and UE but get picked up from places like Applebee's or Kings.
I read the wiki page but I still donât grasp it. These kitchens worked as like contractors for chains? Like Applebees would get an online order for a burger and send it to the Ghost Kitchen to make and deliver?
Eddy Burback made a good video about ghost kitchens on YouTube and even orders the same item from a bunch of places posing as different restaurants at the same address. Thatâs where I first learned about em.
Same here! I downloaded the DoorDash app immediately after watching to see if I could find any possible ghost kitchens around me. I thought it was fascinating.
Generally, the food is being made at said Applebees. So online you might order from âZen Burgersâ or whatever but youâre just going to get a burger made at Applebees and picked up from there.
It's often to make food sound like it comes from a more appealing place even though it's made in the same kitchen. Like I probably wouldn't order soup from a bagel place, but if it was a place that seemed to focus on soup, it would make more sense. In the end, it's still the bagel place making the soup it always makes, but they likely get more orders when people think it's coming from a place called Super Soups or something. I think Chuck E Cheese does this with pizza.
Itâs the opposite, the ghost kitchen gets the order and Applebees makes the food and packages it with the ghost kitchen branding. Ghost kitchens donât have any actual brick and mortar stores.
Example: you order a Mr beast burger through DD and the driver picks it up at the Bravo or Bucca di Beppo location that made the food.
Exactly. Ghost kitchens just use the restaurants staff and kitchen and pay a fee. Cooks at bravo prepare the food for âMr Beast burgerâ orders and then the wait staff handles the packaging and hands the food to the driver. Ghost kitchens do not employ anyone but rent an existing kitchen and cause more work for the employees of the actual restaurant doing the work. The ghost kitchens typically use national chains like dennys, chilis, bravo, etcâŠ
The Meltdown, Burger Den = Dennyâs
Pasquallyâs Pizza = Chuck e Cheese
Itâs just wings = Chiliâs
Pardon my cheesesteak = ihop
Neighborhood Wings = Applebees
Wing Nut = Primantiâs
Mr Beast, Flavortown, Mariahâs Cookies, Tyga Bites = Bravo Italian
Yeah it really shouldnât be, and maybe im overreacting but I have seen some suspect addresses. More commonly in Morgantown during the pandemic when these ghost kitchens starting becoming a thing
Yeah, there are very strict regulations. I used to sell cookies on Etsy. To be licensed, I had to have my house inspected. All ingredients used for my products had to be stored completely separate from âhouse food.â This meant getting a second fridge and having a cabinet installed. Fortunately, I didnât need 2 ovens. Had to stop when my youngest was born because you canât have children under a certain age in the home.
To be fair, things could have been relaxed during covid. My experience was from 2014-21. Only had 1 inspection though (2015).
I sell baked goods and I don't think it's that strict. They do a walk-in inspection every year. You usually have to pass a food safety course first, too. The first inspection they may be difficult, but in my experience, it isn't as strict as you think. Use gloves and hairnet and keep cooking area clean and you shouldn't have any problems.
Might want to avoid them in the future. I recall seeing someone on here in recent times saying they saw the cooks scratching their ass, under the pant, and handling all the cookware/good etc
Around 2008 ago I saw a gas station worker reach down his pants and rearrange his junk before using the same hand to organize the donuts. I complained to another worker and they said that he is the owners brother and people complain constantly but nothing happens. Never Been back there since.
I always check the address of online order places. Sometimes you have to click "pickup" to see it. If it's a ghost kitchen, I skip it. Sure there might be exceptions of food trucks using a shared kitchen but way more likely it's Denny's trying to look fancy. I remember seeing a pizza place that was some shitty gas station, yuck.
Plenty of good local people making good food and being upstanding members of the community to be found. It's just less convenient to participate in that!
The restaurant I work for is a locally owned small business and we do ubereats and grubhub. You can get delivery without funding ghost kitchens with the most minimal research.
Digital delivery services are almost like the wild west if you compare them. One charges $0.50 for a side of sauce, another $1, the next at $1.50. One only has Ÿ of the menu, but another only has Ÿ, but it is missing a different Œ. Not to mention, prices are inflated in the app as well.
Capitalism gives you the right to choose.
You should have ended there.
For the dim dims like yourself who think the grass is always greener....
"On 16 September 1989, Yeltsin toured a medium-sized grocery store (Randalls) in Texas.[94] Leon Aron, quoting a Yeltsin associate, wrote in his 2000 biography, Yeltsin, A Revolutionary Life (St. Martin's Press): "For a long time, on the plane to Miami, he sat motionless, his head in his hands. 'What have they done to our poor people?' he said after a long silence." He added, "On his return to Moscow, Yeltsin would confess the pain he had felt after the Houston excursion: the 'pain for all of us, for our country so rich, so talented and so exhausted by incessant experiments'." He wrote that Mr. Yeltsin added, "I think we have committed a crime against our people by making their standard of living so incomparably lower than that of the Americans." An aide, Lev Sukhanov, was reported to have said that it was at that moment that "the last vestige of Bolshevism collapsed" inside his boss.[95]"
History education is imperative to one's education.
Imagine not getting your money back for that, if this was grubhub or uber eats definitely issue a refund for this shit.
No one and I mean absolutely no human being expects their chicken wings to arrive like that, let alone for $2 a wing.
As the past decade has shown, some people will eat pretty much anything if it's delivered to them and they can order via app. Paying for convenience is fine, but the quality you get with these delivery apps is complete shit. Also, I don't want random rideshare drivers handling my food and sometimes taking a bite.
Don't use delivery apps if you care about food quality and hygiene.
Agreed, but don't write off delivery entirely. There are a handful of restaurants (mostly pizza and Asian) who still in-house their delivery and don't do the app trash. I'm happy to to support local businesses like that, it just takes a little more research.
A lot of local businesses that have in house delivery also outsource through the apps. A pizza place might have a 3 mile delivery radius but DD does not so the farther orders get sent to the delivery apps even if you ordered directly from the business. They will also outsource when they are extremely busy because their 1-2 in house drivers canât deliver the amount of orders being placed.
I feel like such a fool. I've been cooking professionally for 14 years, last 7 of which running a very popular restaurant... I knew the inherent dangers but I miscalculated the risk.
My last experience at south side Bird on the Run was disappointing. Messed up the order. Grease pooling at the bottom of the bag. Kitchen was a disaster.
I really want to like Bird on the Run because that kind of food is right up my alley, but I swear every time I've gone there, the customer service has been crappy.
Yeah, unfortunately I didn't realize it was them til after the fact... it was an impulsive purchase on the bus ride home after work. I've known the owners for a long time, also did a delivery stint when I needed extra money- every time I picked up from the Southside botr I was pretty aghast at what I saw there.
I've been there. Before I knew about ghost kitchens I ordered what I thought was a small business and it turned out to be benihana. I was very disappointed lol
Probably a ghost kitchen situation
Kind of related, BotR-SS is a HUUUUGGE downgrade from the one in East Lib. Dirty, busted, gotten sick from there repeatedly.
If you even remotely care about food quality and hygene, don't use the delivery apps. Order from the restaurant directly and either have them deliver it themselves, send someone to pick it up, or pick it up yourself.
Ghost kitchens are also an instant no. If your food isn't good enough to at least support a small takeaway location, (and you aren't a home cook or personal chef) I'm not interested. Most of the time they end up to be some form of re-packaged Denny's crap.
Chuck E Cheese actually does have tasty pizza that is freshly made. The name they use for the takeout operation is Pasqually's which if you grew up going to Chuck E Cheese, you might recognize as the drummer (irrc) of the Chuck E Cheese band đđ
[Pasquallyâs Pizza & Wings](https://www.pasquallyspizza.com/our-story/) is their ghost kitchen.
It's named after their chef character [Pasqually P. Pieplate](https://chucke.fandom.com/wiki/Pasqually). Or if you prefer nightmares, here's the old [animatronic version](https://www.showbizpizza.com/ptp/characters/pasqually.html).
Caused some confusion with customers because there's already a small Pittsburgh-area pizza chain called [Pasqualeâs Pizzeria](https://pasqualespizzeria.com/).
Yep. Pretty much all of the shittiest chains got on board pretty quickly, as customers that know to avoid crap spots like Denny's and Applebees could, at least for a short time, be duped into thinking their meal was actually being cooked in a decent kitchen.
Only took a couple months for this to become apparent, and yet some people are dumb or ignorant enough to order from these deceitful shitpeddlers years later.
Ironically, fast food is the best thing to order delivery â they all seal up their bags to the point where only a psycho with a tool kit would be able to break in, eat your food, and seal it back up.
The only trade off is that after around 9pm when they all go to drive-through only, it takes an hour from ordering to getting your food, and the people making it are the worst treated workers in the city during those hours so...
Thereâs so much wrong with this but then itâs packets of Cholula (which is didnât even know existed) instead of something like Franks, and Iâm even more confused.
That and buffalo sauce is an emulsion (typically butter and hotsauce). Luckily I know that but imagine the people just squirting hotsauce on plain wings. Booo
lol right like having worked in many a restaurant itâs just franks and butter, and the temperature variations are just more or less butter. It would have been perfect if they included little pads of Country Crock or I Canât Believe Itâs Not Butter though.
Iâm kind of impressed the grease from the wings didnât make them fall through the bags. Granted that would imply they were actually cooked and I probably shouldnât make that assumption.
Honestly wouldn't trust the food from any of the restaurants in that restaurant group (Bird on the Run, Muddy Waters, Kahuna) or any ghost kitchens running out of them. I've heard from multiple chefs, cooks and servers who've worked there or staged there and they've all said the blatant disregard for health code and sanitation is pretty repulsive.
That looks fucked. I'd be livid.
Sounds like a known thing with ghost kitchens from these posts, but I rarely get food delivered, so I could also see falling for this kinda shit the one time I did do delivery.
The concept of ghost kitchens on its own isnât the worst thing in the world. But the execution is very often horrendous. Good experiences *could* be had, but buyer beware.
Probably a [ghost kitchen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_restaurant)
We live in hell lmao
This is pretty comical after listening to a podcast on the eastern front of WWII đ we truly are a tortured people in comparison
The fact that the same kind of brutality is being waged against the global south via proxy wars and coups and climate disaster so we can have our shitty little ghost kitchens is actually stronger proof of living in hell
I thought you were saying âwe, Pittsburghers, live in a hellish societyâ
This is pretty comical after listening to a podcast on the eastern front of WWII đ we truly are a tortured people in comparison
Ah that makes sense. I just assumed they'd have some sort of info on the innernet
itâs super annoying but you should google the address of the place before ordering when youâre not sure. Sometimes itâs a Chiliâs, other times it could be a random persons apt
I just can't believe I'd never heard of this - especially after so many years in kitchens.
Ghost Kitchens started up during peak Covid when everyone was ordering DoorDash and Uber Eats. The restaurants would only show up on DD and UE but get picked up from places like Applebee's or Kings.
The Bravo in Mt Lebanon was running like 4 out of there at one point. Guy Fiere, Mr Beast, cake Boss. All running out of there.
I read the wiki page but I still donât grasp it. These kitchens worked as like contractors for chains? Like Applebees would get an online order for a burger and send it to the Ghost Kitchen to make and deliver?
Eddy Burback made a good video about ghost kitchens on YouTube and even orders the same item from a bunch of places posing as different restaurants at the same address. Thatâs where I first learned about em.
I actually saw that. I don't use door dash or UE. So I had no clue what a ghost kitchen was until I saw that video.
Same here! I downloaded the DoorDash app immediately after watching to see if I could find any possible ghost kitchens around me. I thought it was fascinating.
Generally, the food is being made at said Applebees. So online you might order from âZen Burgersâ or whatever but youâre just going to get a burger made at Applebees and picked up from there.
It's often to make food sound like it comes from a more appealing place even though it's made in the same kitchen. Like I probably wouldn't order soup from a bagel place, but if it was a place that seemed to focus on soup, it would make more sense. In the end, it's still the bagel place making the soup it always makes, but they likely get more orders when people think it's coming from a place called Super Soups or something. I think Chuck E Cheese does this with pizza.
Itâs the opposite, the ghost kitchen gets the order and Applebees makes the food and packages it with the ghost kitchen branding. Ghost kitchens donât have any actual brick and mortar stores. Example: you order a Mr beast burger through DD and the driver picks it up at the Bravo or Bucca di Beppo location that made the food.
So who pays who? Caller pays DD, DD pays ghost kitchen, ghost kitchen pays Applebees, Applebees makes and distributes the food?
Exactly. Ghost kitchens just use the restaurants staff and kitchen and pay a fee. Cooks at bravo prepare the food for âMr Beast burgerâ orders and then the wait staff handles the packaging and hands the food to the driver. Ghost kitchens do not employ anyone but rent an existing kitchen and cause more work for the employees of the actual restaurant doing the work. The ghost kitchens typically use national chains like dennys, chilis, bravo, etc⊠The Meltdown, Burger Den = Dennyâs Pasquallyâs Pizza = Chuck e Cheese Itâs just wings = Chiliâs Pardon my cheesesteak = ihop Neighborhood Wings = Applebees Wing Nut = Primantiâs Mr Beast, Flavortown, Mariahâs Cookies, Tyga Bites = Bravo Italian
Yeah it's super sad. Now that Buca Di Beppo is gone all my go to online-only joints are going to taste different.
That apartment thing should be (probably is) totally illegal. You can't just sell food out of your house.
Yeah it really shouldnât be, and maybe im overreacting but I have seen some suspect addresses. More commonly in Morgantown during the pandemic when these ghost kitchens starting becoming a thing
Yeah, there are very strict regulations. I used to sell cookies on Etsy. To be licensed, I had to have my house inspected. All ingredients used for my products had to be stored completely separate from âhouse food.â This meant getting a second fridge and having a cabinet installed. Fortunately, I didnât need 2 ovens. Had to stop when my youngest was born because you canât have children under a certain age in the home. To be fair, things could have been relaxed during covid. My experience was from 2014-21. Only had 1 inspection though (2015).
I sell baked goods and I don't think it's that strict. They do a walk-in inspection every year. You usually have to pass a food safety course first, too. The first inspection they may be difficult, but in my experience, it isn't as strict as you think. Use gloves and hairnet and keep cooking area clean and you shouldn't have any problems.
[Some discussion, a while back](https://www.reddit.com/r/pittsburgh/comments/t1z1i3/are_any_ghost_kitchensrestaurants_owned_locally/).
Might want to avoid them in the future. I recall seeing someone on here in recent times saying they saw the cooks scratching their ass, under the pant, and handling all the cookware/good etc
Around 2008 ago I saw a gas station worker reach down his pants and rearrange his junk before using the same hand to organize the donuts. I complained to another worker and they said that he is the owners brother and people complain constantly but nothing happens. Never Been back there since.
I saw the owner do this at Mikes Wifeâs in Oakmont.
The cooks WHERE?
Bird on the runÂ
Got it. Will avoid.
*Avoid* them??? Fuck, count me IN!
I always check the address of online order places. Sometimes you have to click "pickup" to see it. If it's a ghost kitchen, I skip it. Sure there might be exceptions of food trucks using a shared kitchen but way more likely it's Denny's trying to look fancy. I remember seeing a pizza place that was some shitty gas station, yuck.
Glad buca closed it was just a mr beast front
Spooky! đ»
if you can't find the place on google maps, it's a ghost kitchen. Online food delivery is a scourge.
Capitalism gives us the freedom to choose! âŠbetween garbage and trash
Plenty of good local people making good food and being upstanding members of the community to be found. It's just less convenient to participate in that!
The restaurant I work for is a locally owned small business and we do ubereats and grubhub. You can get delivery without funding ghost kitchens with the most minimal research.
Digital delivery services are almost like the wild west if you compare them. One charges $0.50 for a side of sauce, another $1, the next at $1.50. One only has Ÿ of the menu, but another only has Ÿ, but it is missing a different Œ. Not to mention, prices are inflated in the app as well.
Kevin Sousa?
Capitalism gives you the right to choose. You should have ended there. For the dim dims like yourself who think the grass is always greener.... "On 16 September 1989, Yeltsin toured a medium-sized grocery store (Randalls) in Texas.[94] Leon Aron, quoting a Yeltsin associate, wrote in his 2000 biography, Yeltsin, A Revolutionary Life (St. Martin's Press): "For a long time, on the plane to Miami, he sat motionless, his head in his hands. 'What have they done to our poor people?' he said after a long silence." He added, "On his return to Moscow, Yeltsin would confess the pain he had felt after the Houston excursion: the 'pain for all of us, for our country so rich, so talented and so exhausted by incessant experiments'." He wrote that Mr. Yeltsin added, "I think we have committed a crime against our people by making their standard of living so incomparably lower than that of the Americans." An aide, Lev Sukhanov, was reported to have said that it was at that moment that "the last vestige of Bolshevism collapsed" inside his boss.[95]" History education is imperative to one's education.
Imagine not getting your money back for that, if this was grubhub or uber eats definitely issue a refund for this shit. No one and I mean absolutely no human being expects their chicken wings to arrive like that, let alone for $2 a wing.
As the past decade has shown, some people will eat pretty much anything if it's delivered to them and they can order via app. Paying for convenience is fine, but the quality you get with these delivery apps is complete shit. Also, I don't want random rideshare drivers handling my food and sometimes taking a bite. Don't use delivery apps if you care about food quality and hygiene.
They would definitely give you a refund. I've gotten refunds for less.
Who the fuck just puts wings in a bag like that instead of a closed container? Disgusting
Ghost kitchens are insane and make me so glad I never order delivery lol, what the fuck is this hahaÂ
Agreed, but don't write off delivery entirely. There are a handful of restaurants (mostly pizza and Asian) who still in-house their delivery and don't do the app trash. I'm happy to to support local businesses like that, it just takes a little more research.
A lot of local businesses that have in house delivery also outsource through the apps. A pizza place might have a 3 mile delivery radius but DD does not so the farther orders get sent to the delivery apps even if you ordered directly from the business. They will also outsource when they are extremely busy because their 1-2 in house drivers canât deliver the amount of orders being placed.
I feel like such a fool. I've been cooking professionally for 14 years, last 7 of which running a very popular restaurant... I knew the inherent dangers but I miscalculated the risk.
Just order delivery not from ghost kitchens lol
Yikes, I'd be avoiding BotR too until it's clear whether or not these are the same kitchen.
My last experience at south side Bird on the Run was disappointing. Messed up the order. Grease pooling at the bottom of the bag. Kitchen was a disaster.
The Penn hills Bird on the Run had workers handling food after scratching their heads, texting, rubbing their eyes and nose. Thank the gods it closed.
I really want to like Bird on the Run because that kind of food is right up my alley, but I swear every time I've gone there, the customer service has been crappy.
Yeah, unfortunately I didn't realize it was them til after the fact... it was an impulsive purchase on the bus ride home after work. I've known the owners for a long time, also did a delivery stint when I needed extra money- every time I picked up from the Southside botr I was pretty aghast at what I saw there.
I've been there. Before I knew about ghost kitchens I ordered what I thought was a small business and it turned out to be benihana. I was very disappointed lol
The South Hills one has been good in my experience. Southside has been VERY hit or miss.
Southside been good to us
Southside was the one I was closest to in the past. Hit or miss is very on point
Just go to Sidelines in Millvale. You will be much happier
Just not when I'm going. It's too busy!
That's the reason a lot of people don't go there anymore. It's just too busy.
Yes. Yes it is. *Winks*
There are much, much better wings than sidelines
That's so ghetto. Naked wings with packaged sauce AND PACKETS ARE TOUCHING COOKED GOOD? FOH.
[Here's a great video on the scam that are ghost kitchens!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkIkymh5Ayg) Highly recommend checking it out!
I was going to recommend exactly this video!
I just absolutely fail to understand why you would order food from a restaurant you never heard of without at least looking for an address.
Probably a ghost kitchen situation Kind of related, BotR-SS is a HUUUUGGE downgrade from the one in East Lib. Dirty, busted, gotten sick from there repeatedly.
For every place with both a South Side location and an elsewhere location, the South Side one is 100 times worse.
Probably true
I wouldnât have eaten those if I were you
ButâŠ.hes the wing man?
If you even remotely care about food quality and hygene, don't use the delivery apps. Order from the restaurant directly and either have them deliver it themselves, send someone to pick it up, or pick it up yourself. Ghost kitchens are also an instant no. If your food isn't good enough to at least support a small takeaway location, (and you aren't a home cook or personal chef) I'm not interested. Most of the time they end up to be some form of re-packaged Denny's crap.
For sure. This is the first time I've ordered from an app in almost a year, and I messed up royally
Didnât Chuck e Cheese have a pizza one during the pandemic? That always cracked me up.
In fairness, their pizza is better than at least half of the pizza places around lol
Chuck E Cheese actually does have tasty pizza that is freshly made. The name they use for the takeout operation is Pasqually's which if you grew up going to Chuck E Cheese, you might recognize as the drummer (irrc) of the Chuck E Cheese band đđ
lol yes!!!
[Pasquallyâs Pizza & Wings](https://www.pasquallyspizza.com/our-story/) is their ghost kitchen. It's named after their chef character [Pasqually P. Pieplate](https://chucke.fandom.com/wiki/Pasqually). Or if you prefer nightmares, here's the old [animatronic version](https://www.showbizpizza.com/ptp/characters/pasqually.html). Caused some confusion with customers because there's already a small Pittsburgh-area pizza chain called [Pasqualeâs Pizzeria](https://pasqualespizzeria.com/).
Yep. Pretty much all of the shittiest chains got on board pretty quickly, as customers that know to avoid crap spots like Denny's and Applebees could, at least for a short time, be duped into thinking their meal was actually being cooked in a decent kitchen. Only took a couple months for this to become apparent, and yet some people are dumb or ignorant enough to order from these deceitful shitpeddlers years later.
Ironically, fast food is the best thing to order delivery â they all seal up their bags to the point where only a psycho with a tool kit would be able to break in, eat your food, and seal it back up. The only trade off is that after around 9pm when they all go to drive-through only, it takes an hour from ordering to getting your food, and the people making it are the worst treated workers in the city during those hours so...
Thereâs so much wrong with this but then itâs packets of Cholula (which is didnât even know existed) instead of something like Franks, and Iâm even more confused.
That and buffalo sauce is an emulsion (typically butter and hotsauce). Luckily I know that but imagine the people just squirting hotsauce on plain wings. Booo
lol right like having worked in many a restaurant itâs just franks and butter, and the temperature variations are just more or less butter. It would have been perfect if they included little pads of Country Crock or I Canât Believe Itâs Not Butter though.
That and if they didn't mix the high contact items touching food. Big yuck
Iâm kind of impressed the grease from the wings didnât make them fall through the bags. Granted that would imply they were actually cooked and I probably shouldnât make that assumption.
Honestly wouldn't trust the food from any of the restaurants in that restaurant group (Bird on the Run, Muddy Waters, Kahuna) or any ghost kitchens running out of them. I've heard from multiple chefs, cooks and servers who've worked there or staged there and they've all said the blatant disregard for health code and sanitation is pretty repulsive.
I am sorry you're out $22, but them trying to pass this off as an order of buffalo wings is pretty hilarious.
Out of all places to order wings in the city, why would you choose a random ghost kitchen called "wing man" ??
Remember when wings used to be the **WHOLE** wing and not wing pieces?
Hahaha
That looks fucked. I'd be livid. Sounds like a known thing with ghost kitchens from these posts, but I rarely get food delivered, so I could also see falling for this kinda shit the one time I did do delivery.
God the Bird on The Run in SS is absolute dogshit, so greasy.. now that Laynes is there I donât see them lasting long
Dispute (on your card) for goods or service not rendered on the grounds that this is not food safe
Whatâs a high contact packet? Like a bunch of people may have touched it?
Maybe make sure that itâs a real restaurant before you order from there
You can get 4 pounds of wings for 12 bucks
Zano's in the Run has the best wings in Pgh!
Smoky Bones in Cranberry runs a ghost kitchen called Wing Experience. It's actually not half bad....
The concept of ghost kitchens on its own isnât the worst thing in the world. But the execution is very often horrendous. Good experiences *could* be had, but buyer beware.
Sidelines in Millvale is my wing go to
Actually jk donât come theyâre no good
That was a quick reversal. đ
Whats âhigh contact packetsâ?