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Ordering on-line from a ghost kitchen?

February 11, 2023 05:28AM
@Isaiah4031a wrote:

@wrosie wrote:

@Isaiah4031a wrote:

I have never received any emails for any ghost kitchen shops.

They were e-mailed or posted as either restaurant or delivery shops, not ghost kitchens.

I would do the two I did before again. The food was so so and overpriced, but it was a delivery shop I could do without leaving the house.

I did not get the email for the restaurant or the delivery shop..
You may live in an area without any. I think that must be the case because the MSC is one of the biggies that I assume you're signed with. I live in a high-population area and it took a while for me to get one that was shop-eligible due to the 3-mile delivery limit. The first GK emails I got were for Wiz Khalifa's food-for-stoners place and the few offered were within my overall shopping radius but outside the 3-mile limit.
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February 11, 2023 05:30AM
@myst4au wrote:

I have done both Thrilled Cheese and Super Mega Dilla delivery shops. Both are ghost kitchens inside IHOP. IHOP talks about these brands as being good for their business. You can read about them here: [www.restaurantdive.com] As others have said, they were both overpriced and under-delicious.
My experience was weird, as I mentioned upthread the Thrilled Cheese meal was godawful but the Super Mega Dilla one was quite satisfactory and both came from the same IHOP. I guess different people working the kitchen on different days?
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February 23, 2023 01:44AM
My SMD was awful.
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February 23, 2023 03:27AM
mine too,
@melg wrote:

My SMD was awful.
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February 23, 2023 04:45AM
There's another round of these now in my area but the one within my delivery zone isn't included, just one that technically is in (based on radius) but the delivery services will only use the IHOP that isn't included this round.
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February 23, 2023 07:53PM
I did the Mr Beast shop and it was a rather simple report. But, as some others have stated, it was low fee and high reimbursement. So, the appeal was hopefully getting a good meal. A good meal, though, it was not. I pretty much did it because my 7 and 9 year olds wanted me to...as they love Mr Beast on YouTube, of course. I found the burger, chicken sandwich, and beast fries to be a big, sloppy, disgusting mess. I would order plain old fast food from McD's, Wendy's or BK any day over that.
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February 23, 2023 08:29PM
They still have them here. Perhaps I should try again to see if they got better. I did one months ago . The driver sent me a text telling me he would be 20 minutes later than planned. Since I still had 30 min until his new eta I was not paying attn to my phone. about 5 minutes prior to the orig time I noticed there had been a ping on my phone so I opened my door and my package was sitting there. I do not know how long. But it was 25 min before he said he would be there. So the food was cold. As another shopper said, there was so little filling it was impossible to stand the quesadilly or what they call them up to show the inside stuff as there was almost no stuff inside. I ordered everything including jalapenos and sauces to the max. and all the other options but my order came with nothing but the cheese. I did get the onion rings in that one. But there were 8 layers of folded over tortilla as it was a big tortilla with nothing in the middle except for the very middle of the tortilla so I had a lot of just bread to eat before the center with just a smattering of cheese. The jalepenos or anything at all including salsa would have really helped it.
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March 01, 2023 07:49PM
The ones in my area had terrible fee/reimbursement. It was paid as a flat rate and the app had a delivery fee, so once you pay for your meal, tax, service fees, tips - the fee was like $1. It wasn't even enough for two peoples meals. I wish I had known that prior to accepting the job, I wish I could have cancelled but I forged on. And then, the food was so bad like it came from a gas station and I don't even mean WaWa. I finished the job but will never do those again.
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March 01, 2023 08:22PM
@hotsauce1 wrote:

The ones in my area had terrible fee/reimbursement. It was paid as a flat rate and the app had a delivery fee, so once you pay for your meal, tax, service fees, tips - the fee was like $1. It wasn't even enough for two peoples meals. I wish I had known that prior to accepting the job, I wish I could have cancelled but I forged on. And then, the food was so bad like it came from a gas station and I don't even mean WaWa. I finished the job but will never do those again.
Wow, I've only done them with 2 companies and both paid enough in reimbursement to cover the expenses. The fees were never great, $7 with the former MSC and now $9 with the MSC that just got them recently.
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March 04, 2023 05:01PM
I did one for SMD and the food was absolutely awful, plus they didn't even get the order right. Not worth doing even though I didn't need to leave the house and I was under the reimbursement level. Only the prepackaged brownie was worth the calories. .

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/04/2023 05:05PM by melg.
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April 15, 2023 12:56AM
I have the local NBC news on and they just did a report about a guy who ordered from a Ghost Kitchen thinking it was something cool, and found out it was a Denny's!
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April 24, 2023 10:26PM
I have done my last one. I got burned on a technicality and then realized there were 158 questions. Not worth my time.
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April 25, 2023 10:10PM
I did one and I swore I would never do another one. But then they had another shop at the same restaurant only another brand food. So I thought okay why not try one more time. Trying one more time was just as big of a mistake as it was the first time. Each of my entrees was supposed to come with fries and did not and when I tried to put in the survey that the fries weren't there it told me that I answered the previous question about it wrong and it took me over an hour to figure out how to put into the thing that I didn't get my fries. But then again, I've tasted their fries before and I have seen their serving sizes on their fries before and I would rather not have them anyway. The survey is too long and too specialized. It's not worth the marginal food for the extraordinary prices, that probably won't be edible when you get it anyway. Or the frustration of changing answers over and over until you figure out the way they want them answered.
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April 25, 2023 11:35PM
I did a shop for a Ghost Kitchen that operates in IHoP locations. There are at least three that are in all the locations in my area. You can find them in Grubhub, Uber Eats, etc. The one with chicken tenders was actually pretty good, certainly better than IHoP's own food.
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April 26, 2023 12:29AM
Interestingly, the IHOP ghost kitchens showed up on the old MSC's job board the first week of April. I grabbed one as the report was a bit easier with the old MSC than the new MSC. I then saw that all the rest were taken off the job board. I thought my shop might get cancelled, so I emailed the scheduler. They said they had met their quota for the week, but that I should still do mine. I did mine and it was approved. I haven't seen them on the old MSC's job board since then.

Old or new MSC, the incorrectly prepared food and the $5 fee doesn't seem worth it anymore.
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April 26, 2023 01:18AM
There are actually Ghost kitchens out there with much better food than the IHOP one I tried. If another one showed up that was not Ghostly cheese that my teeth just bit right past I would try it. I Hop food I thought was better than the Ghost food.
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April 26, 2023 04:54AM
Funny thing about these ghost kitchens, I had never heard of one until I started dashing with the DoorDash app. On multiple occasions, I’ve had to go to a restaurant in Kearney to pick up an order at a ghost kitchen, and the food smells delicious by the way.

Then I tried the ghost burger mystery shop in North Platte since it was bonused so high. I had and still have not ever ordered from an app like DoorDash or Uber eats, so I was completely oblivious to what I was doing. I did attempt to purchase the sandwich along with the rest of the food, but unfortunately, the sandwich was sold out, and therefore I could not continue with the purchase. I messaged the scheduler, and he told me there was nothing I could do, but go home. I would be paid a small fee for my time, but not the full payment. Awe bummer, as I was looking forward to trying the sandwich.

Haven’t seen it in the job board since then anyway.
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April 26, 2023 04:25PM
@melg wrote:

I have the local NBC news on and they just did a report about a guy who ordered from a Ghost Kitchen thinking it was something cool, and found out it was a Denny's!

I saw that. He really liked the food until he went looking for the restaurant and made the discovery. He seemed to have felt cheated out of a true experience.
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April 26, 2023 06:11PM
@Susan L. wrote:

@melg wrote:

I have the local NBC news on and they just did a report about a guy who ordered from a Ghost Kitchen thinking it was something cool, and found out it was a Denny's!

I saw that. He really liked the food until he went looking for the restaurant and made the discovery. He seemed to have felt cheated out of a true experience.

Are you saying that Denny's isn't cool and doesn't have good food?
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April 29, 2023 10:23PM
The guy who made the disappointing discovery was a Millennial. Different idea about what counts as cool compared to Gen-X, Boomer, and Beat generations.
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