TOLEDO, Ohio — During the height of the pandemic, ghost kitchens began multiplying and gaining in popularity, with restaurant owners aiming to capitalize on the booming food-delivery market.
Brick-and-mortar restaurants could rent out excess space to another brand that did not want the overhead that came with waiters and dining space. The alternate brand would operate out of the main restaurant’s kitchen, use their equipment, create their own menu and offer delivery on DoorDash, Grubhub, or Uber Eats.
Another option was for the main kitchen to create multiple brands to try and capture as much of the market share as it could on those delivery apps. A pizza place could create a separate wings brand, pasta brand and subs brand, increasing the odds that a consumer clicks on one of them, funneling all the money back to the same pockets.
But some brands that began to pop up around the country and across northwest Ohio in 2020 and 2021 had no names on storefronts. It was common for delivery drivers to show up and think they were at the wrong location. A call to the brand’s number would often be routed to a call center across the country. For drivers and consumers, it was almost like they were hunting for ghosts.
Finding Toledo's ghost kitchens
During a two-day period, the 11 Investigates team built a ghost kitchen database. It was a laborious process. Available restaurants were scoured on the delivery apps. For listed restaurants, there were information buttons available to click. If the brand wasn’t recognized, that address would be punched into Google Maps, and then run through county property records. Ghost kitchens would not be listed on property records and names would not be visible on storefront photos.
By the time the database was completed, 11 Investigates had found close to 50 ghost kitchens in Toledo. Multiple well-known restaurants were running ghost kitchens – Hooters, Chuck E. Cheese, Chili’s, TGI Friday’s, Applebee’s and Outback Steakhouse.
In one case, a ghost kitchen was running out of a central Toledo home and another was in a small apartment complex.
But two local addresses came up as hotspots for the city’s ghost kitchens: 1734 West Laskey Rd. and 513 Dorr St.
West Laskey's ghost kitchens
If they are trying to hide their businesses, the owners of 1734 West Laskey Rd. are doing a lousy job. Giant menus are available for the main brands – Hindsight Pizza and Wings Up – but other menus are available for the site’s ghost kitchens.
“We originally started doing ghost kitchens in September or October of 2021,” Rod Brant, managing partner of Graze! Shared Kitchen, said
There are four of them on site: Olga’s Express, Pardon My Cheesesteak, Big Knuckle Burgers and MrBeast Burger.
“Olga’s is a regional brand, and they came to us two years ago and said, ‘Hey, we want to do a ghost kitchen. Would you be willing to work with us?’ So, we’re required to buy a lot of their groceries, their raw materials, and we also give them a royalty on gross sales,” Brant said.
Similar deals are in place with the other brands. MrBeast Burger was in the news earlier this week when YouTube sensation MrBeast (whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson) sued Virtual Dining Concepts to shut down the brand, arguing that Virtual Dining is not focused on quality.
Brant said his focus is to produce quality so that consumers continue to come back.
“We got into this as a way to expand our reach and to have more volume. We have the knowledge and we have the equipment to do all these brands,” Brant said.
Having more brands gives Brant’s team a competitive advantage on the delivery apps, which he says produces roughly 50% of the company’s business.
“People find food in different ways. Some people will type in the name of the restaurant and that’s who they order from,” he said. “Some people will say ‘I want pizza,’ and all the pizza places will pop up. And some people just start browsing to see what’s available, close and open.”
Regulating the ghost kitchens
There are nearly 3,000 food facility licenses in Lucas County. It’s a monumental task to inspect each of those facilities one to two times a year. If a facility has serious violations, it could be visited even more.
Ghost kitchens are almost just that in the eyes of the state: ghosts. It provides almost no guidance to local health departments. Some shared kitchens, which often have multiple ghost kitchens, are inspected by the Ohio Department of Agriculture. But the counties are responsible for inspecting the rest of the brands.
Inspections are one of the biggest concerns about these types of kitchens. Yellow Cab Pizza is listed on delivery services as an available pizza restaurant. But if that name is punched into the Toledo-Lucas County Health Department’s inspection database, nothing comes up.
However, the main restaurant – Happy’s Pizza – is listed. The county does not have a complete list of active ghost kitchens. A consumer needs to be a little crafty to find the reports. But any facility that is licensed to sell food in Lucas County is inspected.
And those inspections fall to the team of Jennifer Gottschalk, Lucas County’s director of environmental health.
She said inspectors must approve all menus from facilities – even ghost kitchens – to ensure the proper equipment is available to produce it and that employees are trained properly to use that equipment.
One indication of the confusion generated by the lack of state guidance was highlighted during interviews. Brant said he believed that he could start another brand in his kitchen without notifying the county. Gottschalk said that’s not true.
“He is obligated to let us know what he is operating and where,” she said. “We have to review menus as part of inspections.”
Many ghost kitchens we found had the same employees producing food for all the brands. But some restaurants do rent out excess space, which could be a problem.
“I do think it is a huge liability to restaurant owners to allow this to occur," Gottschalk said. "As we speak to our restaurant owners, they need to understand that anything that goes on in that building is under their license, that’s under their liability.”
If a consumer does have an issue with getting sick from food, she suggested filing a complaint with the health department.
“We would try to follow up, but when we’re following up, we need to know who they order from or what address was listed on their receipt," she said.
The ghost kitchen purge
Starting last year, with DoorDash and Grubhub, the food delivery services began purging thousands of ghost kitchens from their sites.
This year alone, Uber Eats has cleared more than 8,000 brands from its site, according to Business Insider.
The issue is that some parent restaurants would spin off multiple brands with similar menus in an attempt to grab market share. Some menus were nearly identical. The apps now require menus to be at least 50% different than the parent restaurant and any other brand operating out of the same kitchen.
When asked for comment, a Grubhub spokesperson provided 11 Investigates with the following statement:
“Virtual concepts are just one way we help small businesses generate new revenue streams, reach more customers and get increased exposure on Grubhub without adding any overhead costs. We have guidelines for operating a virtual concept on our marketplace and recently updated them to include the limitation of the number of concepts that are run from a single location to create a better experience for diners.”
Putting the ghost kitchens to the test
Similar menus were one of the targets of this investigation.
According to records, two brands were operating out of 5077 Monroe St. – Pasqually’s Pizza and Wings and Chuck E. Cheese.
Last week, we ordered and picked up one pepperoni pizza from Chuck E. Cheese. Then we ordered another pepperoni pizza from Pasqually’s, which was only listed as available for delivery.
The large pizzas were identical in size and each contained 12 pieces and looked very similar. Multiple members of the WTOL 11 newsroom sampled the pizzas and were divided on whether they tasted the same, with several staff members insisting the sauce was different.
But during a call to the store, a manager said ingredients for each brand are the same, with the exception of Pasqually’s using a sharper cheddar cheese. He also said Pasqually’s pizzas are larger and cut into eight slices. Ours, however, were the same size and each included 12 slices.
The price, however, was very different. To pick up the Chuck E. Cheese pizza, it cost us $21.98. To have Pasqually’s delivered, it was $28.43.
A mysterious turn
In an attempt to sample other ghost kitchens available on the delivery apps, we ordered from four different kitchens.
The first attempt was the Yellow Cab Pizza. We received a message that the order was being prepared, then that the driver was headed to the store, but right at the time delivery was expected, we received an email that the order was canceled.
A call to the number listed on the app was listed as a New Hampshire number. The woman who answered seemed to have no idea why we were calling her, but she said her company didn’t have any pizza places in Toledo.
Similar experiences resulted from orders to the Chicken Wing Company and Fresh Pizza. Orders were prepared, then canceled.
Finally, we ordered from Hydeaway Kitchen. It was not a commercial facility, but rather a home in central Toledo. Our order was accepted, was being prepared and the driver was en route.
In an attempt to see the handoff to the DoorDash driver, we drove to the location. The delivery driver arrived several minutes early and waited outside for the food. After the expected delivery time came and went, the driver pulled away from the home without the food.
Our phone rang and a DoorDash representative explained that the driver was not allowed to go into the “restaurant” to get the order, but she did try to call the kitchen and got no answer. The representative said she also tried to call without success. Therefore, our order was, once again, canceled.
Once again, we were ghosted by the ghost kitchen.
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