Ghost kitchens are ghosting because running lots of restaurants is hard

2021: Ghost kitchens are the future!

2024: Ghost kitchens are the past!

During the pandemic, delivery-only restaurants — aka ghost kitchens or virtual brands — were a lifesaver for many restaurants whose customers were eating a lot more at home. Empty restaurants were able to repurpose their kitchens to make a wide variety of cuisines to deliver — often a broader menu than what they’d offered normally.

Mariah Carey, Chuck E. Cheese, and MrBeast, to name a few, all opened virtual food brands. But now as the pandemic has waned and people are eating in restaurants again, restaurants are having trouble handling multiple businesses, the New York Times reports.

“Everyone thought if you have the labor and the equipment, it would be easy to run virtual brands,” said Kevin Hochman, chief executive of Brinker, which owns Chili’s and Maggiano’s, told the NYT. The company launched two virtual brands but has since shuttered one and pared down the other.

“The reality is, most of the delivery times for virtual brands transact during busy times for the regular restaurant,” Hochman said.

Earlier this year, Uber Eats cut thousands of “virtual brands” to alleviate a glut of customer-confusing duplicates that were frustrating users.