If you've ever ordered food online in New York City, you might want to double check that your dish was actually prepared in a licensed restaurant. If not, you could be ordering from a "ghost kitchen" — a non-existent restaurant where food is prepared in someone's home, or even a different restaurant with a low health rating, NBC 4 New York reports.
Surveying 100 online menus, NBC 4 New York found that over 10% of them turned out to be ghost kitchens.
Unlike real restaurants, which are subject to verification and inspection, ghost kitchens aren't graded by the city's department of health.
By cross-referencing Seamless and GrubHub restaurant addresses with the city's restaurant inspection database, NBC 4 New York was able to flag possible ghost kitchens. An investigation conducted by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs also found the same problems.
Here's a look at the GrubHub ordering page for Really Chinese. When NBC 4 New York checked out the address listed, it turned out to be a private residence, not a restaurant.
NBC 4 New York finally tracked down where their Really Chinese order came from, a different restaurant called Abby Chinese located four blocks away.
While Abby Chinese does in fact exist, the New York City Health Inspector's office has found evidence of mice, rats, or roaches there, six times in the last 2 years.
The menu pages for Really Chinese and Abby Chinese have since been removed and a representative from GrubHub Seamless (the two companies merged in 2013) told Tech Insider they are working on the larger issue.
Here's their statement:
At GrubHub, we take the accuracy of our restaurant listings seriously. We are partnering with New York’s Department of Consumer Affairs to address this issue and remove inaccuracies from our platforms.
Going forward, GrubHub will take additional steps to verify the details restaurants provide. Our new process includes more checks to validate the name and location of restaurants. Should any discrepancies arise, we will take immediate action to correct information or remove inaccurate listings of restaurants on our platforms.
GrubHub would not disclose how they vetted restaurants in the past, but the manager of Abby Chinese said he was never asked to show a Department of Health certification to sell his restaurant's food on Seamless, NBC 4 New York also reports.
For now, you might want to just stick to cooking for yourself.
Check out the entire NBC 4 New York report here or below.
If you have any other information about ghost kitchens, we'd love to hear about it. Feel free to email mkircher@techinsider.io.
