Doncaster's ghost restaurants: Ordering food from eating places that don't exist

Locked ‘n’ Loaded, 88th Street Burger Bar and Sin City Burger are just some of the names of Doncaster-based businesses cropping up on big food delivery apps such as Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat.

There’s also the likes of Mighty Burger, K Town Chicken and El Rondo Mexicano, sending out food to hungry diners across Doncaster.

If you’ve never heard of any of these places, there’s a good reason for that.

Welcome to the world of ghost restaurants or kitchens – virtual restaurants where food is being served up and sent out to people, but which, in reality, don’t exist.

There’s no building to dine in, no front of house staff, no tables or chairs, no menu – just a kitchen where a handful of chefs serve up burgers, fries and pizzas from shared premises to meet the growing demand for takeaway delivery food.

Run out of faceless buildings on industrial estates, pub kitchens or other catering premises, ghost kitchens first became established during the Covid lockdowns in towns and cities across the world.

And Doncaster has plenty of them. You’ll find all the names listed above, but none of them exist in the real world.

You can’t book a table and turn-up to dine, because there’s no restaurant. Just a name and a handful of cooks and little else.

Sometimes, the same premises can have up to five or six different firms operating from one kitchen.

So you may well think the burgers from one “restaurant” are bigger and tastier, when in reality, once you’ve placed your order from one venue over another, its more than likely that the same chef in the same kitchen will be serving up exactly the same burger to dash to your door.

And you can’t collect your food, only get it delivered – keeping the mystery of the city’s ghost kitchens well and truly alive.

Indeed, one of the busiest restaurant locations in the UK is situated in a faceless industrial estate in south-east London.

Dubbed also as ‘dark’, ‘headless’ and ‘cloud’ restaurants, these rather ominous-sounding establishments are actually terms for commercial delivery-only kitchens.

Despite the cost of living crisis, public appetite for food delivery services is higher than it’s ever been before, with nearly a third (31 per cent) of consumers saying they have at least one takeaway a week.

And with that rise, it’s not surprising that traditional brick and mortar restaurants need to find a solution to cater for both guests of the restaurant – guests who dine in and takeaway customers who choose to order food from delivery apps.

The addition of these commercial kitchens to restaurants means that the traffic of dine-in orders and takeaways are completely segregated.

Traditional high street locations can concentrate on dine-in trade with fewer takeaway orders during busy periods, which reduces wait times.

Meanwhile, the ghost locations can cater restaurant-quality food to new locations, as well as lessen the swarm of delivery bikes away from the high streets.

Diverting food delivery drivers away from central locations to industrial sites not only mitigates traffic congestion in busy areas, it means the delivery drivers can pick up multiple orders from one location.

And, while you may feel a little ‘tricked’ by ordering your favourite dishes from somewhere that’s just a controlled kitchen rather than the restaurant itself, it does come with its benefits for both consumers as well as the industry.

The ghost establishments essentially act as a collective space for restaurants.

Having all restaurants in one confined and controlled space means higher hygiene standards, higher food safety ratings and better takeaway packaging standards. It also offers better value for money for restaurants, as it means they are not paying high street rent prices to service the takeaway market.