Food delivery apps impersonate popular restaurant- I wonder if this becomes more common as ghost kitchens emerge
twitter.com/chezpim/status/122132760028439756...
twitter.comPosted Jan 27, 2020, 6:51 AM UTC
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twitter.comRead this thread. I had absolutely no idea this even happened.
36
Didn't realize this until I read the SFGate article. Won't be using GH anymore.
1
After hearing how Door Dash was screwing drivers on tips I completely stopped using all these apps.
21
tip in cash!
6
I never carry cash anymore. Plus look at what the service fees are paying for, fake websites and ghost kitchens.
6
TPG wrote a piece on the premium you pay for using their service. Within this space, only UberEats is profitable (and I only know that they are profitable in SF, not elsewhere). Doordash charges an insane 20% service fee, small order fees, and typically consolidates several orders on top of each other, so 99% of the time, my food arrives like 20 minutes late, cold, and all so Doordash can pocket their beleaguered couriers' tips. All that grift – and they still aren't remotely profitable. The SoftBank curse will soon come home to roost and they absolutely deserve it.
2
but then the driver sees an order with $0 tip and won’t accept it.
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I don't think any of the services show the tip until after the delivery. Uber I think waits an hour after for example.
4
I stopped using all of these services. The prices are so obscene that you can easily spend 25$ for a stupid burger or something.
17
25$ for a stupid burger or something
I don't understand people who will unironically say shit like "Eat the Rich" and then proceed to order from DoorDash and UberEats every day. Who exactly do they think is richer than that?
3
Yep Walmart is bad, but Amazon is great.
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Walmart is cheaper
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Yep Walmart is bad, but Amazon is great.
1
The restaurant doesn't even offer take out. So where did the food actually come from?
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Another business signed up in their name. Obviously all these companies don’t vet anything - it’s all automated essentially. There are kitchens springing up that are delivery only for multiple restaurants so it’s not like a courier is going to be suspicious when they pick up an order at some random place.
17
That’s not how this worked. Kin Khao showed up in Seamless/GH search results a ton because it’s a popular restaurant. Someone somewhere edited or some set of data was pushed to a page that Seamless/GH generated for restaurants in this situation. Deliveries were accepted but nothing actually got delivered in Kin Khao’s case. I’m open to seeing evidence of imposter kitchens using the name and signing up as the restaurant but I have not so far.
The Kin Khao issue is distinct from the other issue Deli Board experienced where Yelp menu data was fed into a Seamless/GH page and a delivery driver was directed to order for someone and then pick it up. In that case the driver almost certainly didn’t place an order and assumed Seamless/GH did it already.
1
I need to hear from the companies involved. I've heard this speculation and I've also heard another story about the restaurant itself actually being involved. Sounds shady but there are multiple stories in this thread
There are kitchens springing up that are delivery only for multiple restaurants
If this is true, it would be a big story.
0â€
3
Thanks. That doesn't say they are impersonating other restaurants, though. That's the spicy assertion in this thread: that someone is making the food from these restaurants that don't actually offer delivery or even take out.
Right?
1
Wow, ghost kitchens is a new term for me. What an inventive scam. I bet these food delivery companies don't even know it's happening. If she can prove that they did know this was occurring it would be a hefty lawsuit I would imagine. Otherwise I think someone figured out they can sell food through these delivery companies by impersonating legitimate restaurants. I also wonder where they handed off the food to the delivery drivers? Did they enter random addresses and just had a guy stand outside to hand the food off or were they dumb enough to enter their ghost kitchen address into grubhub.
7
there's one at 60 Morris St. is suuuuuper WEIRD. i picked up my food from there & was like, what the fresh hell is this??
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I noticed this too! I saw a few different restaurants using this address on Uber eats.
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I've pretty much given up on delivery, since few restaurants are doing their own anymore, and I don't feel like paying a delivery fee + secret extra $13 delivery fee +fake tip that goes to the company, not the drivers. I can fix the last by tipping in cash, nbd, but the rest of it...screw it, I'll just go get takeout somewhere myself.
4
Despite being relentlessly downvoted disputing the claim that this was some cloud kitchen being an imposter, I feel compelled to continue listing the facts...
“The company recently started adding other restaurants to its sites without such a partnership, when it finds restaurants that are in high demand, it said. In those cases, someone from the company orders the food ahead or at the restaurant, and a driver is sent to pick it up, it added.
'Kin Khao was one of these restaurants we added to our marketplace for this initiative to include more restaurants on our platform, and unfortunately, we referenced the incorrect menu for this restaurant. As soon as they reached out to us expressing they’d like to be removed and flagged the incorrect menu, we honored the request. They are no longer on our marketplace,' Grubhub said."
Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/SF-restaurant-Kin-Khao-doesn-t-offer-delivery-15005797.php
"A couple of months ago, the spokesperson explained, Grubhub began adding "high demand" restaurants to their website for those restaurants to receive more orders and revenue from deliveries completed by Grubhub’s drivers. Menu information and restaurant hours — although proven inaccurate, in many cases — were based on information found online.
According to the Grubhub spokesperson, their team orders ahead or in person from the restaurant, after which one of their drivers picks up, pays for and delivers the order."
Source: https://m.sfgate.com/food/article/Grubhub-Michelin-star-SF-restaurants-delivery-15006168.php
This ALL lines up perfectly with what these companies have been known to do in the past, have claimed to have done in this instance, and with the exact situation at hand.
Also, FYI, grubhub and seamless are the same company. Hence why the error on one platform propagated across to seamless as well.
Again, a cloud kitchen cannot possibly be doing this because the address was the ACTUAL restaurant... You can't be pretending to fulfill orders by being an imposter if the driver is told to go to the actual real restaurant...that would only work if you had a different address listed (the address of the cloud kitchen). By having the original address listed, you'd just get the order canceled over and over since no one is providing any food.
Deli Board is a great example, where drivers keep showing up to pick up orders even though Deli Board actually had no idea there were orders. It's not like drivers are being routed to an actual imposter who is secretly fulfilling orders.
EDIT 2: Sfist just updated their article:
"Update: Grubhub responded to the Chronicle about the Kin Khao situation, claiming that there was no imposter kitchen — though this has yet to be confirmed — but that Kin Khao was simply a restaurant deemed "in high demand" that had been added to the system without the restaurant's explicit partnership. "Kin Khao was one of these restaurants we added to our marketplace for this initiative to include more restaurants on our platform, and unfortunately, we referenced the incorrect menu for this restaurant. As soon as they reached out to us expressing they’d like to be removed and flagged the incorrect menu, we honored the request," the company said.
This is still a bizarre explanation. Grubhub claims that its own representatives intended to call in takeout orders from Kin Khao, and then send delivery drivers to fetch them"
EDIT 2: Reporter confirms that the man in question did not get his food.
2â€
This restaurant doesn’t offer take out.
7
People. this is NOT that hard.
Grubhub/Seamess (and Doordash) will put companies on their delivery platform by themselves. They'll even put up fake websites to order takeout form these restaurants. Then, the orders get routed to the restaurant (either manually by phone or by their own online ordering system) and Grubhub gets to take their cut.
Sometimes, they end up doing this for restaurants that DO takeout, but accidentally don't end up routing the order to the restaurant (like the situation with Deli Board) Sometimes, they end up doing this for restaurants that DON'T EVEN OFFER TAKEOUT! (as what happened with Kin Khao)
With Kin Khao, they doubled fucked up because they used some random Thai menu that obviously was not from Kin Khao.
Because the restaurants don't actually get the order, or don't even offer takeout or delivery to begin with, the drivers end up at the restaurant and there is NO food waiting for them. The customer ends up not receiving the order.
This happens ALL THE TIME with these platforms.
"The problem is nationwide, and the situation extends past Grubhub and Seamless. In 2018, a Chicago restaurant called Burger Antics sued DoorDash for posting its menu and selling its food without permission, according to the Chicago Tribune, but that hasn't stopped the app. Restaurant owners in Providence cited problems with unauthorized orders via Doordash and Postmates last year, and Philadelphia Magazine reported a similar situation earlier this month.
"The couriers walk in and we tell them we don’t even have an account with Doordash," Judy Ni of Baology told Philadelphia. "And so they leave and they go outside and call the guest, and the guest doesn’t understand what’s going on—it makes us look absolutely terrible, and it becomes this mess of confusion for the guest.'"
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The delivery service has to be in on the scam
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This was literally how doordash got started years ago. Putting restaurants in Palo Alto who didn't want to participate on their platform, have their drivers with the doordash shirts and bags show up to pick up takeout orders over and over, so that the restaurants would see show much they're missing out on as a way to pressure then to get on the platform.
At first, it works pretty well, and the restaurants they could target are ones for which this works well, well suited for delivery. But at this point, there's not many options that are in that boat left, and it sounds like some of the platforms are getting really sloppy about putting on restaurants that clearly aren't suitable for delivery to begin with.
Edit:
GrubHub explicitly acknowledged that this was their own policy and that this was the fault of their own actions in the case of kin khao:
"Techamuanvivit did not respond to SFGATE’s request for an interview, but a Grubhub spokesperson confirmed the menu they had listed for Kin Khao on their app was incorrect and the restaurant had since been removed from their marketplace.
But why was it there in the first place?
A couple of months ago, the spokesperson explained, Grubhub began adding "high demand" restaurants to their website for those restaurants to receive more orders and revenue from deliveries completed by Grubhub’s drivers. Menu information and restaurant hours — although proven inaccurate, in many cases — were based on information found online.
According to the Grubhub spokesperson, their team orders ahead or in person from the restaurant, after which one of their drivers picks up, pays for and delivers the order."
Source: https://m.sfgate.com/food/article/Grubhub-Michelin-star-SF-restaurants-delivery-15006168.php
“The company recently started adding other restaurants to its sites without such a partnership, when it finds restaurants that are in high demand, it said. In those cases, someone from the company orders the food ahead or at the restaurant, and a driver is sent to pick it up, it added.
'Kin Khao was one of these restaurants we added to our marketplace for this initiative to include more restaurants on our platform, and unfortunately, we referenced the incorrect menu for this restaurant. As soon as they reached out to us expressing they’d like to be removed and flagged the incorrect menu, we honored the request. They are no longer on our marketplace,' Grubhub said."
Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/SF-restaurant-Kin-Khao-doesn-t-offer-delivery-15005797.php
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No, that’s not what is happening here. This restaurant doesn’t offer takeout.
Someone is cooking Thai food likely in a commercial kitchen somewhere in SF, and branding themselves as Kim khao, a Michelin star restaurant. It’s pirated Thai food.
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The delivery platforms need to start authenticating the restaurants. Like twitter verification
9
Mmmmm pirate Thai
9
Wow, I was trying to figure out where the food was coming from, given the restaurant doesn't even do take out.
Sounds like outright fraud! I wonder where this will go
2
“The company recently started adding other restaurants to its sites without such a partnership, when it finds restaurants that are in high demand, it said. In those cases, someone from the company orders the food ahead or at the restaurant, and a driver is sent to pick it up, it added.
'Kin Khao was one of these restaurants we added to our marketplace for this initiative to include more restaurants on our platform, and unfortunately, we referenced the incorrect menu for this restaurant. As soon as they reached out to us expressing they’d like to be removed and flagged the incorrect menu, we honored the request. They are no longer on our marketplace,' Grubhub said."
Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/SF-restaurant-Kin-Khao-doesn-t-offer-delivery-15005797.php
-1
BUT WHERE DID THE FOOD COME FROM
You're all over this thread with this quote as if it explains away the situation but it just does not. While this restaurant was listed on their system, if a hapless customer were to order the food, where then would it come from? It literally could not have come from where it was meant to come from. So where did it come from?
A similar thing happened at San Francisco’s Deli Board, which also doesn’t usually offer delivery except for large catering orders from its own vehicles. At lunchtime Saturday, at least three different Grubhub delivery drivers showed up at the restaurant to pick up sandwich orders unbeknownst to owner Adam Mesnick. Some of the orders were for dishes no longer on his menu or at outdated prices, said Mesnick, who has reached out to Grubhub to ask to be removed from the site.
This quote makes sense, because you can order pick up from the restaurant:
But that other one...where did that food come from? That's a whole other situation
3
“The company recently started adding other restaurants to its sites without such a partnership, when it finds restaurants that are in high demand, it said. In those cases, someone from the company orders the food ahead or at the restaurant, and a driver is sent to pick it up, it added.
'Kin Khao was one of these restaurants we added to our marketplace for this initiative to include more restaurants on our platform, and unfortunately, we referenced the incorrect menu for this restaurant. As soon as they reached out to us expressing they’d like to be removed and flagged the incorrect menu, we honored the request. They are no longer on our marketplace,' Grubhub said."
Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/SF-restaurant-Kin-Khao-doesn-t-offer-delivery-15005797.php
1
I am not sure where you are getting the impression that this was a fake cloud kitchen trying to impersonate Kin Khao. That is incorrect. This was done by GrubHub itself:
"But why was it there in the first place?
A couple of months ago, the spokesperson explained, Grubhub began adding "high demand" restaurants to their website for those restaurants to receive more orders and revenue from deliveries completed by Grubhub’s drivers. Menu information and restaurant hours — although proven inaccurate, in many cases — were based on information found online.
According to the Grubhub spokesperson, their team orders ahead or in person from the restaurant, after which one of their drivers picks up, pays for and delivers the order."
Source: https://m.sfgate.com/food/article/Grubhub-Michelin-star-SF-restaurants-delivery-15006168.php
This is a trend that's been noted across the industry:
https://www.grubstreet.com/amp/2019/07/everything-you-need-to-know-about-grubhubs-fake-websites.html
Pim's assertion in interviews to the chronicle and sfist that this may be an impersonator was mistaken. In fact, as the restaurant / food pick up location was still set to the actual address of Kin Khao, it should have been clear it was not a cloud kitchen based in another location trying to drive business by impersonation.
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The menu on Seamless for "Kin Khao" is completely different from what Kin Khao serves at their restaurant so no it was not simply a case of Seamless ordering takeout directly from the restaurant.
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Fair point, my ghost kitchen assumption was just a guess. But what we do know is that this wasn’t just someone ordering takeout from the actual restaurant and then delivering the customer.
I personally doubt that the company itself was impersonating kin khao in this case, but who knows. Also note this was Seamless, not grubhub. In any case, thanks for the thoughtful response.
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You realize seamless and grub hub are the same thing right?
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No, this is someone pretending to be them, and defrauding customers. Worse, if these platforms don't know who this is, there's no knowing if the food isn't tainted or if they have a license to serve food, inspections, etc.
This is fucked up.
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I am not sure where you are getting the impression that this was a fake cloud kitchen trying to impersonate Kin Khao. That is incorrect. This was done by GrubHub itself:
"But why was it there in the first place?
A couple of months ago, the spokesperson explained, Grubhub began adding "high demand" restaurants to their website for those restaurants to receive more orders and revenue from deliveries completed by Grubhub’s drivers. Menu information and restaurant hours — although proven inaccurate, in many cases — were based on information found online.
According to the Grubhub spokesperson, their team orders ahead or in person from the restaurant, after which one of their drivers picks up, pays for and delivers the order."
Source: https://m.sfgate.com/food/article/Grubhub-Michelin-star-SF-restaurants-delivery-15006168.php
This is a trend that's been noted across the industry:
https://www.grubstreet.com/amp/2019/07/everything-you-need-to-know-about-grubhubs-fake-websites.html
Pim's assertion in interviews to the chronicle and sfist that this may be an impersonator was mistaken. In fact, as the restaurant / food pick up location was still set to the actual address of Kin Khao, it should have been clear it was not a cloud kitchen based in another location trying to drive business by impersonation.
Edit: Grubhub themselves admit to this error:
“The company recently started adding other restaurants to its sites without such a partnership, when it finds restaurants that are in high demand, it said. In those cases, someone from the company orders the food ahead or at the restaurant, and a driver is sent to pick it up, it added.
'Kin Khao was one of these restaurants we added to our marketplace for this initiative to include more restaurants on our platform, and unfortunately, we referenced the incorrect menu for this restaurant. As soon as they reached out to us expressing they’d like to be removed and flagged the incorrect menu, we honored the request. They are no longer on our marketplace,' Grubhub said."
Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/SF-restaurant-Kin-Khao-doesn-t-offer-delivery-15005797.php
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I am not sure where you are getting the impression that this was NOT a fake cloud kitchen.
According to owner of the restaurant, they neither offer delivery or takeout.
https://sfist.com/2020/01/26/imposter-impersonates-kin-khao-on-seamless-grubhub/
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And the menu Seamless listed for "Kin Khao" is completely different from the real restaurant's actual menu.
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Yeah there is conflicting information in this thread.
0
“The company recently started adding other restaurants to its sites without such a partnership, when it finds restaurants that are in high demand, it said. In those cases, someone from the company orders the food ahead or at the restaurant, and a driver is sent to pick it up, it added.
'Kin Khao was one of these restaurants we added to our marketplace for this initiative to include more restaurants on our platform, and unfortunately, we referenced the incorrect menu for this restaurant. As soon as they reached out to us expressing they’d like to be removed and flagged the incorrect menu, we honored the request. They are no longer on our marketplace,' Grubhub said."
Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/SF-restaurant-Kin-Khao-doesn-t-offer-delivery-15005797.php
0
According to her they did not provide any take out. That was in the linked article I read.
2
“The company recently started adding other restaurants to its sites without such a partnership, when it finds restaurants that are in high demand, it said. In those cases, someone from the company orders the food ahead or at the restaurant, and a driver is sent to pick it up, it added.
'Kin Khao was one of these restaurants we added to our marketplace for this initiative to include more restaurants on our platform, and unfortunately, we referenced the incorrect menu for this restaurant. As soon as they reached out to us expressing they’d like to be removed and flagged the incorrect menu, we honored the request. They are no longer on our marketplace,' Grubhub said."
Source: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/SF-restaurant-Kin-Khao-doesn-t-offer-delivery-15005797.php
1
I remember eating at Kin Khao once. It was a very underwhelming experience given the price and amount of hype it gets.
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Well, I guess that makes someone defrauding customers and operating under someone else's business name OK then, huh? Hell, is uppose Kin Khao should be happy because maybe these guys are better!
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Yes, that’s EXACTLY what they were saying. Good job.
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It's a complete non-sequitor. If you interject something like that into a completely different context, you're gonna have a bad time.
11
I ate an interesting and satisfying meal at kin khao. Would go back if in the neighborhood.
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Sf secret, the Thai place across the street is much better !
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Same here. Ate there twice, giving it a second chance. Same feeling both times. Maybe it was the lunch chef.
1â€
At first I was like "oh Grubhub's just ordering delivery from the restaurant without having an explicit agreement with the restaurant... no big deal..." Then I read this twitter thread from Kin Khao's owner and Grubhub is actually getting food from some ghost kitchen and pretending it's food from Kin Khao, complete with putting down Kin Khao's real address on the fake Kin Khao's menu page on Grubhub... Wow.
e: Seamless, not GrubHub apparently.
Yeah this is full on fraud. Wonder what the health inspection rating is on that ghost kitchen? 🤷‍♀️
From the SFist:
"Update: Grubhub responded to the Chronicle about the Kin Khao situation, claiming that there was no imposter kitchen — though this has yet to be confirmed — but that Kin Khao was simply a restaurant deemed "in high demand" that had been added to the system without the restaurant's explicit partnership. "Kin Khao was one of these restaurants we added to our marketplace for this initiative to include more restaurants on our platform, and unfortunately, we referenced the incorrect menu for this restaurant. As soon as they reached out to us expressing they’d like to be removed and flagged the incorrect menu, we honored the request," the company said.
[...] Grubhub claims that its own representatives intended to call in takeout orders from Kin Khao, and then send delivery drivers to fetch them"
They barked up the wrong tree considering they added a Michelin starred sit down place with no takeout options. The hope was that they could add every restaurant, make the drivers order for people, and then have the driver pick it up in a...seamless manner.
My guess is that this works for the low end places most of the time but there’s tons of drivers who don’t read the info they receive in the app (i.e. “place an order for x customer”) and this leads to the confusion the other places had.
Couple this with the out of date menus listed on Yelp that get fed into Seamless/Grubhub listings (and which don’t account for specials of the day and other limited time items) and you have the situation listed here.
This is a PR nightmare for the delivery business as people in that thread are already speculating on shady ghost kitchens and fraudsters making people fake food. I’m excited to see where it goes.