Kind of off-topic, but might as well share it here. Sometimes I daydream about starting a small restaurant-market duo.

The restaurant’s recipes would be completely open; upon request clients get a copy of the recipe they ate, for free, so they can try it at home too. No unlisted ingredients or secret steps, but the real deal. Perhaps you make it better than we do, perhaps worse, but it’ll be different - give 100 people a recipe and you won’t get 100 of the same dish, you’ll get 100 slightly different dishes, and the restaurant would focus on that.

Of course, to cook you’d need some ingredients. That’s where the market comes in, conveniently next to the restaurant. Focus on high quality spices, wines and beers, and ingredients that are a bit difficult to find elsewhere, but required if you want to recreate the restaurant dishes. And, if you get curious about an ingredient but you don’t know how to cook with it, the restaurant is right next door.

So there would be a synergy: the restaurant advertises the market, and the market advertises the restaurant.

A lot of the appeal of the duo would be to make a welcoming environment. So if you’re in the mood to just snack on something, and perhaps drink a beer, you can. …but you might change your idea once you see (and smell!) today’s lunch. And the staff of the duo would be well-trained; not just on politeness, but also they’d need to know at least some very basic cooking, to help clients asking questions about the dishes and ingredients.

There would be no delivery system - food would be strictly sold in situ. And… sure, you could send someone to buy and then deliver you the food, but that’s boring.

I feel like it’s the complete opposite of a ghost kitchen - because instead of fighting against the human factor, it would embrace it. It acknowledges some people would rather eat what they cook at home (that’s fine!), while some would rather have someone cooking for them (that’s fine too!); and that some people are a bit of both, and they get curious about restaurant dishes. Location would be essential, as well as a good staff; and instead of mass producing low quality food, I’d rather see a bunch of loyal regulars kept happy through honest and morally acceptable means.

I don’t even know if it’s viable as a business. But it’s something I’d like to do.

On-topic. This failure of ghost kitchens is not the very least surprising to me.

Delivery apps charge restaurants up to 30% commission fees

This is nuts. They’re gouging both the customers and the restaurants.

Well, it could have happened to worse things, but this is a good start.

Yeah as with any business, you cant remove the human aspec