We’re creating a network of ‘ghost restaurants’ through sloth

WE’VE made shops an endangered species, and if we don’t get off the couch, restaurants could go the same way, writes Kerry Parnell.

Uber Eats and other delivery services have been a boon for some restaurants, like Parramatta’s BL Burgers, but we’ll regret it if they ditch the shopfront and start doing delivery only. (Pic: News Corp)

“WHAT’S a shop, mummy?”

If we’re not careful, this question’s going to be asked by our offspring one day very soon. The rise of online delivery is turning our retail districts into ghost towns. And now it’s even threatening to vaporise restaurants too.

Shopping for clothes in an actual store is becoming an outmoded experience — so much so, that many of the chains I visit seem to assume you won’t really bother to buy things in there and have a kind of laissez-faire attitude to stock. You can see the things you want, but good luck finding any in your size.

Walk down Oxford St in Paddington — once described as “Sydney’s Bond St,” and the top end is like a Wild West ghost town, with empty windows of what were once thriving boutiques staring at you like sorrowful eyes, the odd poster stuck on them flapping forlornly in the wind.

It’s not until you reach The Intersection, with its huddle of designer stores clinging together round Glenmore Rd that you breathe a sigh of relief that yes, there is still life here.

But while businesses shut up their store fronts and go online, moving to anonymous warehouses, the courier business is booming. More and more vans crisscross the country busy delivering plastic-wrapped parcels to nitwits like me, who buy everything from socks to saucepans online, because it’s cheaper and easier.

Empty shops are becoming a familiar sight. Let’s hope empty restaurants don’t follow. (Pic: Steve Pohlner)

Such is our appetite for home delivery, it’s now reached epidemic proportions in the food business too. Thanks to services like Uber Eats and Deliveroo, we’re ordering so much online that eateries are setting up “ghost kitchens” to cater for home deliveries.

So as to avoid ruining the diner’s experience with a non-stop stream of helmet-headed delivery guys plodding through the restaurant, many restaurant owners are opening separate kitchens on another site, to prepare online orders.

Sounds sensible, until you realise the food you’ve specifically ordered from the local restaurant you love, isn’t actually from that restaurant anymore.

And how long will it be until the main eatery closes completely, and all we have are ghost kitchens, hidden away in featureless buildings, pumping out dinners for diners too lazy to go outside.

Burgerlove’s Steve Agi says they have so many takeaway orders from their Melbourne stores, they’ve set up “strategically-placed ghost kitchens to cope with demand.

“It’s undeniable that delivery services have changed the entire hospitality landscape,” he says.

In New York, ghost kitchens are so prolific that there’s been a rise in fake restaurants — online listings with fancy addresses, that don’t actually exist. Instead your food is cooked in a dodgy restaurant far away, or worse, someone’s kitchen.

“New Yorkers should not be deceived by fake listings,” warned Consumer Affairs Commissioner Julie Menin.

And so while we all sit marooned in our front rooms buried in a sea of excess packaging from all these home deliveries, be it a burger or a pair of Blundstones, our increasing unwillingness to move our backsides off our sofas is pretty soon going to mean there’s nowhere to go to at all.

The only thing we seem willing to walk for is our daily shot of coffee. And the day someone figures out how to effectively home deliver that, it’s all over.