‘Ghost kitchens’ appear in Columbia area. Your dinner might be from Hooters
Tender Shack, a national “online only” chicken restaurant brand, announced last fall it was expanding delivery to more than a dozen cities across South Carolina, including Columbia. In its unveiling, the “dang good chicken” brand didn’t mention that its meals actually are cooked inside Outback Steakhouse restaurants.
Similarly, some folks who frequent food delivery apps in the Columbia and Lexington areas have been surprised to learn their MrBeast Burger orders are coming out of a Ruby Tuesday’s kitchen.
Scrolling DoorDash and thinking about Pasqually’s Pizza for dinner? Your meal is coming from Chuck E. Cheese.
Wings from It’s Just Wings? Chili’s.
A sandwich from Chicken Sammy’s? Red Robin.
Dozens of kitchen crossovers like these are popping up on food delivery apps in and around Columbia. They’ve left some delivery customers feeling duped or, at the very least, confused about where their food is coming from, as a rising concept known as “ghost kitchens” trickles down to the local market.
In some cases, independent companies are joining forces to crank meals out of one kitchen and funnel them through the delivery app pipeline. In other cases, singular companies are spinning off new online brands of their own but capitalizing on the kitchens in their already well-known restaurants. But in almost every case, these ghost kitchen concepts can be difficult to identify for unsuspecting customers scrolling hungrily through delivery apps.
“They’re not quite prevalent in Columbia yet, but you can start to feel like there’s a movement that’s growing with it,” said Chris Knezevich, an instructor at the University of South Carolina School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management.
As smaller cities, Columbia and Lexington have been slower to see the creep of this new-ish restaurant trend that has some food industry watchers and customers wary and others optimistic about innovation and new revenue streams for restaurants.
Variously known as “ghost kitchens” or “virtual kitchens” or “dark kitchens,” Tender Shack, MrBeast and others are brands that have no brick-and-mortar, sit-down dining locations. Sometimes, they outsource the cooking to other restaurant brands. They’ve grown in number, popularity and general recognition over the past few years, spurred in large part by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Restaurant Business, an online publication, called these virtual concepts “a kind of cheat code” for expansion in the food industry.
Some three dozen virtual-only ghost kitchen brands can be found locally on the delivery apps DoorDash, Uber Eats, Postmates and others, depending on your location and the timing of your order.
For some in the restaurant industry, the ghost kitchen concept is hailed as a way to make ends meet at a time when the dine-in restaurant industry is suffering — basically a restaurant revenue lifeline. For others, namely national delivery app services or companies such as Cloud Kitchens and Ghost Kitchen Charleston that have sprung up as ghost kitchen incubators, it’s an opportunity to capitalize on natural changes in the food industry.
“The virtual brand, it generates that buzz. People go and they flock to it. It’s something unique and new. People want to go there and check it out,” said Knezevich, who has worked in numerous front- and back-of-house roles in restaurants. Restaurant chains and restaurateurs, he said, are “trying to get their hands in any game they can to stay prevalent, to stay fresh. ... And sometimes it means sacrificing a small percentage of your own sales (to delivery apps) to generate traffic.”
The ghost kitchen-delivery model can also, in some cases, come at the expense of food and service quality, both customers and restaurateurs have noted.
Others, including some Columbia-area independent restaurateurs who’ve begun to embrace ghost kitchens, see the trend as a profitable way to evolve and, simply, hopefully, survive in an industry that’s been uniquely crippled by the coronavirus pandemic.
‘What is this trickery?!’
The ghost kitchen trend isn’t new in big cities with big food scenes, from New York to San Francisco. It’s been driven largely by the rise of food delivery and the decline of eating in restaurants, and the trend appears to have accelerated throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
Restaurant industry experts have predicted that the popularity of food delivery, driven by third-party delivery companies such as DoorDash, Uber Eats and Postmates, is likely to stick around — and so, too, might these delivery-only food brands that live exclusively online and in shared kitchens.
“That, to me, is where the future is,” said William Knapp, a chef and restaurant instructor at USC’s School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management. “And if one of those (ghost kitchen) concepts doesn’t work, just drop it. … It’s no different than if you have new menu items that aren’t working.”
In a smaller city like Columbia, these shared kitchens are most often found inside recognizable national restaurant chain locations, like Chili’s and Ruby Tuesday. And Chuck E. Cheese and Hooters.
Why would a national chain company — or, for that matter, an independent restaurant — cook food under another name? There are plenty of reasons, Knapp and other industry watchers have noted. For one, a spin-off virtual brand requires a low financial investment, seeing as a restaurant already has the kitchen infrastructure and staff in place. New brands from a single location also can boost total sales for the parent brand, as they’re able to, in theory, reach multiple demographics outside of a single restaurant’s normal customer base. Plus, they’re able to capture cost efficiencies, such as buying one order of beef to use for multiple brand menus and paying one kitchen staff instead of four.
By at least some accounts, some big brands claim to be seeing success with these virtual concepts cooked out of their ghost kitchens. When Outback Steakhouse parent company Bloomin’ Brands announced the nationwide launch of Tender Shack about a year ago, its CEO, David Deno, said Tender Shack test markets had “exceeded all of our sales, profit, guest and operating metrics,” Restaurant Business reported. “It was clear we had a winner.”
Besides Bloomin’ Brands, a number of national chains and their parent companies have spun off independent “online only” restaurant brands — such as Burger Den by Denny’s and Thighstop by, of course, Wingstop — and market them exclusively on delivery apps, often with no obvious indication that they’re offshoots of the parent brands.
For instance, the only way to know that Wild Burger — a restaurant featured on DoorDash with a menu that includes a “bacon smashed hatch chile burger,” fried pickles, chocolate fudge cake and a dozen other offerings — is actually an offshoot of Buffalo Wild Wings is to take note of the address from which your Wild Burger order is being delivered. For a downtown Columbia customer, that’s 4500 Devine St., home of Buffalo Wild Wings.
At 2504 Augusta Road in West Columbia, a Ruby Tuesday restaurant is producing app delivery orders from Wow Bao (Asian food), Pasta Americana and Libby’s BBQ. One kitchen, four (or more) restaurant brands.
DoorDash orders for Hootie’s Burger Bar, Hootie’s Chicken Tenders and Hootie’s Bait and Tackle are actually coming from — you might have guessed it — Hooters restaurants on Two Notch and Fernandina roads.
And Pasqually’s Pizza gets picked up from Chuck E. Cheese at 1775 Burning Tree Drive in West Columbia.
Around three dozen ghost kitchen or virtual-only restaurant brands can be found on Columbia-area DoorDash delivery apps, sometimes more or less depending on the day, time of day, or your location.
Not all of the brands are secret spinoffs from national chain restaurants.
Locally, you can find Wing King delivered out of Eddie’s Calzones in Five Points and Creative Happiness Eggroll Ladi out of Main Moon on Rosewood Drive. And there’s MrBeast Burger, a standalone online brand not affiliated with any particular restaurant or restaurant group, that’s cooked locally out of Grill Marks, Ruby Tuesday and other kitchens.
Since late 2020, MrBeast Burger has exploded into one of the most well-known virtual-only brands in the country, created by a YouTube star. Its smash-style burgers recently have been the topic of numerous posts and comment chains in the 31,000-member Columbia Eats Facebook group, where it appears many people have been learning for the first time about the concept of ghost kitchens.
“lol what is this trickery?!” one commenter said on a post about MrBeast Burger and ghost kitchen brands.
Another said, “this is really confusing, like some secret underground restaurant.”
A couple of food delivery drivers commented in the group that they are sometimes confused by the location they are picking up an app order from.
Another commenter noted, “I think it’s missleading because let’s just say I’d never eat at x and when I order from another brand I may not want it to come from a certain kitchen.”
Jason Brown, a Lexington County resident whose family occasionally orders from food delivery apps, said he wasn’t aware that ghost kitchens were as prevalent as they are until seeing multiple posts about them in the Columbia Eats group.
“It’s almost kind of like a bait-and-switch,” he said in an interview.
Now that he’s more aware of chain restaurants cooking virtual brands, Brown said he’ll be paying more attention to the address a meal is coming from when ordering food delivery apps.
“Personally, there’s some places that I just don’t necessarily like or won’t go back to,” he said. “If (the food) comes from there, I’m not interested. ... That’ll be something I keep in mind going forward.”
Ghost kitchens go local
While national chains like Ruby Tuesday and Outback are becoming known for their role in the ghost kitchen trend, some independent restaurateurs are turning to the ghost kitchen model to try to stand out in this evolving food environment.
Coming soon to a delivery app near you will be burgers, duck fat fries, chicken sandwiches and more from Oh Me So Hungry and Smokin J’s Wings, two new independent ghost kitchen concepts in the works from local chef and restaurateur Jeff Blackmon.
“I think it’s a very smart concept,” Blackmon said. “It’s really minimum investment in it. The only thing I have to do right now is promote.
“I’m hoping that it will work.”
Having worked in and helped open numerous Columbia-area restaurants over the years and finding success with a food truck during the pandemic, Blackmon now believes there’s value in the concept of ghost kitchens, and he’s about to step out on a limb where many other local restaurateurs haven’t ventured yet. Blackmon plans to launch multiple virtual-only restaurant brands that he’ll prepare out of a single host “ghost” kitchen, starting with the Oh Me So Hungry brand that will debut on food delivery apps locally this month.
Blackmon figures he can manage numerous online-only brands of his own creation out of one kitchen, which he also owns; it’s the same concept as a Ruby Tuesday running Wow Bao, MrBeast and other orders, but make it local and independent.
Very few locally owned, Columbia-area restaurants appear to be hosts for virtual brands for now, judging by local options on delivery apps. Blackmon believes his move might help set off a larger trend for local restaurateurs — if he succeeds, of course. And Knapp, the USC instructor, says adaptions like this could make good sense for local food folks in certain circumstances.
“If I was just a pure investor looking for an opportunity, I would go pure ghost kitchen,” Knapp said. But on the other hand, he added, “As a chef, I’m always going to want to have brick and mortar because that’s why you got into it, for the service side.”
Blackmon is hoping his new ghost kitchen concepts can help him win both ways.
“My key to success, I would say, is besides being consistent and having good customer service and product, is always trying to stay two to three steps ahead, and this is my new concept,” Blackmon said. “I’ve never failed at food, and if I do, it’s going to surprise me.”
