Your guide to why a 'ghost kitchen' may have made that takeout from your favorite restaurant

Recently, I was working from home in Eagle Rock, hungry, but trying to meet my LAist deadlines. I decided to quickly go get lunch at a sushi place I’d been recommended, Rice and Nori.

Since I’m new to the area and rely on Google Maps for everything, I followed it to an address on Colorado Avenue in Pasadena.

But when I got there, I found myself in front of a liquor store and what looked like a small auto shop. You know, the classic red and black bold lettering with racer stripes along the exterior. Nothing like a restaurant.

But Google Maps insisted that this auto-shop-maybe-it's-a-warehouse was, in fact, where my lunch was being prepared. And on the sign above the door, it said Allied Food To-Go. So I took a deep breath and walked in.

What I found was something like an Amazon locker meets Hot Dog on a Stick. There was no hostess and no tables — no seating at all in fact. Instead, there were white lockers on the left all the way up to the ceiling, and a desk with a tablet on top.

I was confused as to where I was. There was an employee placing food into the lockers, assisted by what seemed to be a robot, but since talking to strangers is on my top 10 list of things I hate to do, I decided to just navigate this one on my own.

The tablet had 15 restaurant options to choose from, and after scrolling past lots of birria and Mediterranean food, I found Rice and Nori on the last screen and picked what I wanted.

I awkwardly stood by the lockers, middle school flashbacks flooding in, wondering what would happen next.

A few minutes later — a text! Apparently my order was ready in locker D2. I pressed a button on my phone and it opened automatically, like the gates of heaven, and there I found my spicy tuna onigiri and edamame. (I’d been looking in the other direction, but I’m pretty sure one of the robots put it there. Later, I found out they have names, Rosie and Johnny).

By now, the space was filling with delivery drivers hustling to grab orders. Still confused, still hungry, I sped off in my car to process what just happened.

Is this normal for Pasadena? Again, I’m new.

What is a ghost kitchen?

Back at home, I googled Allied Food To-Go and discovered it’s a ghost kitchen, a commercial kitchen where multiple vendors make food that’s ordered online for pickup or delivery. Perfect for the digital age, customers and drivers usually pick up their orders using a tablet — no interaction with an employee is necessary.

Allied Food To-Go is just one location of CloudKitchens , a larger company that operates multi-vendor ghost kitchens in cities like Los Angeles, Miami, and New York (Co-founder of Uber Travis Kalanick invested a few years ago). In L.A. according to its website, CloudKitchens currently operates 11 ghost kitchens in places like Long Beach and Koreatown.

I tried to contact CloudKitchens but they couldn’t be reached. I only got through to one location in Echo Park, who declined to comment.

How does it work?

Ghost kitchens took off due to the pandemic when many restaurant owners shifted to delivery-only operations to reach customers out of public safety concerns. By leaving their storefronts and switching to a less costly ghost kitchen, they could also cut costs — making this new set-up popular post-pandemic too.

I wanted to understand more, so I tracked down George Shenefelt, a partner at Rice and Nori. He told me that they’d initially partnered with CloudKitchens to experiment with other concepts (but haven’t thus far) because their locations had become too busy for the kitchen to make anything besides their staples.

Most ghost kitchens function the same way. Food vendors pay rent to the ghost kitchen operator, whether it be a company like CloudKitchens or an individual, to use the space. The prices vary according to the size of the space, type of equipment and whether additional storage is needed, according to CloudKitchens’ website .

Another fee is added for utilities and general operating costs, such as the employees (or robots) needed to transport food from the kitchen to customers.

Vendors are given individual or shared kitchen spaces to prepare and produce their food. Their workstations are usually adjacent to other local vendors renting in the same ghost kitchen.

On a food delivery app, these all show up as different restaurants, but their locations will be the same. The only way to tell if it's from a ghost kitchen is to look up the vendor’s address or drive there.

Since ordering delivery is the reality for most of us at the end of a long day, chances are you’ll never stumble into a ghost kitchen like I did.

Struggling without a storefront

While ghost kitchens can be a good way for restaurants to cut costs, they come with several downsides. Shenefelt says he has found staffing the ghost kitchen to be challenging.

“It kind of feels like a prison,” he said. The space has no windows and is only around 200 square feet, turning off many employees looking for more interactive work experiences.

Another major drawback is that without a storefront, a new restaurant can struggle to find customers. Rice and Nori has been around since 2018, has two locations and an Instagram following. But others are not so well-established.

Janet Kang originally started Pizza Baby as a ghost kitchen but broke her lease last September because sales were too low. Between paying for rent and utility costs, she had no extra money available for marketing to draw in customers.

She said it’s a “matter of money,” whether using a ghost kitchen ultimately turns out to be profitable. “Do you have enough cash reserve to stick around long enough to get noticed?”

Winston Shipp, founder of ¡Quesadilla Mía! shared a similar experience. He started in the pandemic renting a space at a delivery-only CloudKitchen. But few knew of their brand.

“You are at the mercy of people searching on apps looking for food,” said Shipp. He also left CloudKitchen and now rents a kitchen for a limited number of hours per week, rather than having a permanent space in a ghost kitchen.

Shipp sees ghost kitchens as ideal options for already-successful restaurants looking to move delivery away from their brick-and-mortar locations. Kitchen staff can better focus on dine-in customers and prevent long lines and wait times.

However, Yuri Amsellem, owner of DTLA Kitchens , a commercial kitchen that is used as a ghost kitchen and for other ventures like filming in southeast LA, sees ghost kitchens as a “great start” for small businesses. “We are incubators,” he told LAist, where vendors will eventually expand into their own brick-and-mortar locations.

Should I order from one?

If you need a reliable lunch option when hunger strikes, ghost kitchens are the way to go. With no dine-in customers to distract the kitchen, your food will arrive quickly to your doorstep. Or, you can pick it up from an automatic locker.

But if you’re new to a restaurant and need some advice on what to order, opt for a brick-and-mortar. Employees can impart their knowledge about flavor, the level of spice, or whether the dish you want contains traces of gluten, among other preferences.

Plus, it's hard to beat an excellent mealtime ambiance.

So, would I go back to a ghost kitchen?

Maybe.

My Rice and Nori order from Allied Food To-Go was delicious and the food quality was not compromised. It was packed in sealed containers with extra soy sauce and chopsticks.

But at the end of the day, I prefer a meal shared with friends amid a lively restaurant. No ghost kitchen can replace that.