Back in 2020, I wrote about where I discovered that "ghost kitchens" had made their way to my neck of the woods. Even though I am aware that some brands were using the idea of ghost – or virtual – kitchens to experiment with new dishes or even different cuisines, that still left me with a strange feeling. As I said then:
I don’t want people handling my food to be pretending to be someone else. It just feels… wrong that a place would want to hide who was actually making your food.
So when I decided to treat myself by ordering a burger, I was a little skeptical of a "Wild Burger" showing up which was offering free delivery and no service charge.
Long story short – it’s Buffalo Wild Wings.
Or rather, it’s just the burgers from Buffalo Wild Wing’s menu. There is nothing different about the offerings from "Wild Burger" compared to the offerings from Buffalo Wild Wings. At first glance, it appeared that there were different prices, but Buffalo Wild Wings automatically included a side when you order a burger with its higher priced option, and "Wild Burger" required you to add a side dish manually. Once you did that, the prices were almost identical – in fact, the "lower" priced option of Wild Burger ended up costing just a tiny bit more.
I really can’t figure out why a restaurant would do this – or at least, I can’t think of any reasons that don’t make me start feeling really uncomfortable. The best-case scenario is that it’s some kind of A/B market testing (particularly given the discounted delivery charge/fee on one of them) or that they’re pretending to be multiple restaurants to trick people into "trying the new place" instead of skipping over their entry, but even those explanations seem a bit shady.
Because what I said in 2020 is still valid:
It just feels… wrong that a place would want to hide who was actually making your food.
Featured Photo by Sandra Seitamaa on Unsplash