I do Grab Food delivery and noticed that some shops purposely put different name on their Grab profile and actual signboard name. At first I thought it was just laziness or simply some people fucked up, an annoyance to us riders having to play hide and seek, but now I begin to feel like this is a deliberate ploy.

These are so called virtual kitchens. They don’t actually exist, but just a front for some other companies/operations. Nothing wrong with that, even Nestle don’t sell everything under the Nestle brand.

Where it gets insidious is when a single shop use multi terminals, spamming the marketplace. Customer don’t realise that the vast choice they see on the platform are actually them getting more of the same, and platform owners don’t mind because it makes their platform look thriving. This is just hearsay but it seems like the platform marketing people are also encouraging/facilitating this behind the scene.

For customers, virtual kitchens by brick and mortar restaurants is not a big problem actually, other than feeling spoffed, since this are still run by people with actual experience in food business industry.

Dedicated virtual kitchens? Those can be really sketchy. They don’t accept dine ins, so there is zero customer monitoring of their cleanliness etc. Even for us riders we can only go up until the hole in the wall pickup counter. Can’t see anything inside.

British media did a coverage on this in the UK, aka ghost kitchens

And since they are not an eatery there is also a question on whether they are subjected to inspection by the authorities. I don’t recall seeing any of those Gred Kebersihan stickers in these premises.

So yeah, guys, tech doesn’t always make life better. It can be a source of issues that we have no idea how to navigate at all.

Caveat emptor. (Buyer beware)