Scam Ghost Kitchens on Doordash Are Worse Than You Think
This may sound like a bad Yelp review, but stick with me. It’s not. It’s about deceptive marketing on the part of ghost kitchens and how the delivery apps are turning a blind eye.
This all started on Christmas, when we had spent the day cleaning the house and by the time dinner rolled around, we decided it would be a good day to just order something delivered. Portland had just been hammered by snow and ice, so it just seemed easier to let the food come to us. We decided to try out a new place called “Portland Nature Burgers” because it was one of the few vegan options available that night. Again, it was Christmas and snowy, so our usual haunts were closed.
Food arrived 45 minutes later but something was off.
The burger was just a thin, flat cardboard “patty” with nothing else inside the clearly microwaved bun. Like nothing. No sauce. None of the condiments in the “Avocado and Cheese.” We also ordered a salad, which was advertised as “spinach, artichokes, tomatoes, sautéed mushrooms, pesto, sesame seeds, and balsamic.” Instead, we got a plate of lettuce with real bacon and eggs on it. But even though we don’t eat meat, this was clearly old looking salad. Like the kind you might find in a gas station.
Ok, so this is where it starts getting weird.
We started to look into this place and discovered that it had an address, and that this address has several restaurants listed there. Each restaurant has poor reviews, with the main complaint being that they don’t deliver what they list on their menu. It all seems to be run by a place called “Homage Industrial Kitchen.”
So naturally, I look up the business license to see if any of the ghost kitchens have an LLC. Nope, just Homage.
So now I have a contact name, and I Google it. The first link that pops up is pretty jarring.
John Wirtz, the owner of this ghost kitchen, was convicted in 2018 of raping a 14-year-old girl. He and his roommate had kidnapped her, but he testified against the roomie and only ended up serving time for the rape. He got out in 2020 and immediately opened this kitchen business.
Surprising no one, the kitchen does not care about food safety.
inspections.myhealthdepartment.com
But then I found a recent Willamette Week article about the place. It turns out he runs SEVENTY SIX ghost kitchens on Doordash, Uber Eats, etc.
As you read the article, note that his business partner is Seth Thayres, a former cop who “retired” after being caught stealing from a non-profit and doing meth.
So what’s the scam, really? It’s that they have a gross kitchen with stale, unclean food. They open dozens of kitchen names, and that when one gets bad enough ratings, they simply spin up a new one that appears to be a freshly opened restaurant, taking advantage of people’s willingness to give a fledgling business a chance. But it’s just the same gross, stale food pushed out at an astounding 5,000 orders per week.
And so, I come to the end of my tale. A bad veggie burger? Yes! But so much more. These companies have an obligation to act ethically and to ensure that their vendors aren’t just fooling people. It’s why we pay them outrageous fees, right?