When a recipe goes viral on TikTok, everybody talks about it. Lots of food content creators will make their own versions of it, co-workers will eventually start asking you if you have tried it, and maybe fast food chains or food brands will try to take advantage of the trend (like Popeyes did with Girl Dinner). This is the life cycle of a viral recipe. But now, there’s a new stage, one that allows people to try a viral TikTok recipe without making it themselves.
This month, a new concept called Creators’ Kitchen launched. It’s a virtual restaurant where people can order TikTok famous dishes for pickup or delivery. It’s like if TikTok and GrubHub had a baby. You can order directly from the website or search Creators’ Kitchen on your food delivery app of choice. Right now, Creators’ Kitchen offers a small menu of Italian food, including viral TikTok dishes like pasta chips, baked feta pasta, and my favorite, spicy vodka penne.
Here's how Creators’ Kitchen works.
The website for Creators’ Kitchen features the viral video of the recipe available to order, a short description of the dish, and a photo of the dish you can order. The users credited with these viral dishes partner with Virtual Dining Concepts (VDC), the brand behind the Creators’ Kitchen and many other ghost kitchen businesses, sharing in a portion of the profits and essentially commodifying their recipe.
Other TikTok creators can apply to be an ambassador, too. Essentially, you can get paid to get food from Creators’ Kitchen and give it a good review on TikTok. You can also apply to get your recipe added to the site’s menu. Although I have not yet tested food from Creators’ Kitchen, I did some digging to see how and where the food is prepared.
Where is the food from Creators’ Kitchen made?
Here’s where things get a little complicated. When I looked up the address of the Creators’ Kitchen location in Boston, it led me to a Bertucci’s. On the FAQ page of the Creator’s Kitchen website asking where they are located, the response is “Creators’ Kitchen is a delivery and pick-up restaurant available across the United States.”
Is Bertucci’s acting as a ghost kitchen where menu items from Bertucci’s are rebranded as viral TikTok recipes just for Creators’ Kitchen? Or is Bertucci’s just making the dishes for Creators’ Kitchen because they have all the ingredients? When I searched for the Cherry Hill, New Jersey location, it was connected to Brio Italian Grille. Salt Lake City’s location leads to Buca di Beppo. Canton, Ohio leads to Bravo! Italian Kitchen. Turns out, most of the listed addresses are actually chain Italian restaurants.
What is a ghost kitchen?
This concept, where a restaurant doesn’t have a storefront for customers to visit, but is instead only available via delivery on food delivery apps, is called a ghost kitchen. Ghost kitchen companies, like VDC, create a name for its “restaurant” and advertise it to anyone who has a kitchen. But on food delivery apps, these ghost kitchens look like any of the brick and mortar restaurants listed. And sometimes, chain restaurants, like IHOP or TGI Fridays, can opt-in to these ghost kitchen restaurants and pose as different restaurants under a different name on food delivery apps, like Creators’ Kitchen and Bertucci’s in Boston.
All of these Italian chain restaurants connected to Creators’ Kitchen addresses, like Buca di Beppo, Bravo! Italian Kitchen, and — you guessed it — Bertucci’s, are owned by the same parent company, Earl Enterprises. It’s likely that Earl Enterprises and VDC have a partnership where Creators’ Kitchen food is made and prepared in Earl Enterprise kitchens.
Selling TikTok famous foods in an effort to make them more accessible isn’t a bad idea, and it’s good that content creators can see monetary benefits to their viral recipes. But the concept of ghost kitchens just doesn’t sit right. People dine out to taste food that is original, where the people who are cooking it care about how it comes out. If somebody opens a dine-in restaurant that prepares TikTok famous foods and credits their owners, I would happily support it. But until then, I’d rather make the effort to prepare it myself.