That Food You Ordered for Delivery?

Things are different today, when one scroll through restaurant delivery apps returns everything from sushi to souvlaki, but also a wealth of questions if you’ve noticed that many of the eateries on offer are ones you’ve never seen, much less stepped foot in before. 

In fact, many of them don’t exist, at least not in the traditional restaurant sense. They are virtual brands that can be found only on the delivery apps. Many are new, born when pandemic-prompted stay-at-home orders spiked demand for delivered food. Their offerings are prepared in what have come to be known as ghost kitchens. And if that sounds spooky, so might the fact that some virtual restaurants try pretty hard to mask their identities.

A number of ghost kitchens run their businesses out of commercial kitchen spaces without storefronts, places that used to be the domain of caterers and the like.

For example, ChefReady in Denver is a facility with 10 separate professional kitchen spaces and a roster of tenants that include purveyors of everything from Mexican paletas, to hero sandwiches, artisanal pizza, and Thai food. Each proprietor has between 215 and 320 square feet and their own operating permit. “In the world of digital dining, it’s all about your food, not your address,” says ChefReady founder Nili Malach Poynter.