GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) — There are a few new restaurants open now in Northeast Wisconsin…but you won’t be able to get a table.
Digital restaurants, or ‘ghost kitchens’, as they’re sometimes called, have no physical locations. They’re digital-only, available through delivery apps like DoorDash, UberEats, and GrubHub.
There’s nothing digital about the food, though. Real kitchens, from established restaurants, make the food before a driver picks it up and delivers it to the customer.
In Green Bay, one of those places is JJ Cafe. Owner and manager Jamie Waller has signed on with a digital restaurant franchising group and is now operating two out of his kitchen, in addition to their regular service.
“Right now we have Mariah’s Cookies, which is related with Mariah Carey, and the other is Mr. Beast Burger,” Waller explained. “Obviously he’s a huge celebrity too, has a huge following on YouTube and that.”
Mr. Beast Burger, specifically, has drawn a lot of attention to the ghost kitchen concept nationwide. Mr. Beast is the Youtube identity of Jimmy Donaldson, who’s gained worldwide fame for his series of expensive stunts, one of which was done to launch the restaurant.
“It was kind of slow to start out,” Waller said of the ghost kitchen business. “I mean, obviously not every one wants to order two dollar cookies [from Mariah’s Cookies]. But once we started the burger one, it’s just been absolutely insane since then.”
Waller receives sometimes over 200 orders a day for Mr. Beast Burger specifically. He says the ghost kitchen operation has actually surpassed his regular business.
“Well it started with COVID, of course, because we we’re looking at any way to make ends meet without having to go out of business,” Waller explained. “It was a way to get us through, and now it’s kinda overtaking our regular business.”
Waller is planning to add more ghost kitchen services to run out of the cafe.
While small business owners like Waller can benefit from franchising a digital restaurant, bigger fish are getting involved, too.
Old Chicago Pizza and Taproom, which has a Green Bay location, is also running a ghost kitchen out of their restaurant. It’s called Twisted Tenders, and promotes “chef inspired” chicken tenders and dipping sauces.
Josh Kern is with SBP Hospitality, the parent company of Old Chicago. He says the concept started during the pandemic, when restaurants in some cities launched new menus and identities when their dine-in restaurants closed.
It’s a concept he believes is here for good.
“It actually allows us to kind of test have kitchens that are that are active, and we can get an immediate response from consumers,” Kern told WTAQ.
It’s possible, even, that ghost kitchens that wind up popular enough on delivery apps could end up, ironically, expanding in the future to brick-and-mortar locations. Kern says there has already been discussion on that in regards to Twisted Tenders.
It has certainly changed things at JJ Cafe. While the typical factory worker clientele can still be seen taking up space in the booths and at the bar, you can find nearly as many DoorDash and UberEats drivers waiting for their pick-ups as well.
In addition to Mariah’s Cookies, Mr. Beast Burger, and Twisted Tenders, Green Bay and the Fox Valley alike share the Wing Dept., a digital restaurant run out of Red Robin.
Both Waller and Kern told WTAQ they plan on adding more digital restaurants to the lineups in the coming months.
