People passing by San Jose’s Downtown Food Hall could be forgiven for thinking it’s closed.
The dark interior appears to house abandoned equipment. Next to a closed door directly beneath the building’s awning, an “open” sign goes out. The actual entrance is three windows down, under an incongruous green and white striped awning.
San Jose’s Downtown Food Hall, which opened earlier this year, is said to have dozens of restaurants, but that’s partly a facade. With fewer than 10 kitchens in operation, some business owners have created multiple storefronts to showcase variations of different kitchens, giving the illusion of a larger operation than actually exists. But the service model isn’t working for owners or customers, with marketing issues and order confusion among many issues.
Varun Aggarwal and his wife Tanvi operate a single kitchen under nine different restaurant names, with vegetarian menus covering classic Indian dishes, street food, pizza, burgers, Chinese food and budget items aimed at students. He said that although he has what he claims is the largest selection of vegetarian dishes in the country, with more than 200 items, the lack of visibility of his kitchen is hampering his business.
“We are not allowed to have a sign outside the building,” he told San José Spotlight, “or anything that lets the customer know what we have. All we have is our little logo on that kiosk. “Business is going well, but it should grow faster.”
Restaurants in the Food Hall, run by CloudKitchens, also produces food for delivery and pickup, although there is on-site seating. Known as a ghost kitchen, the business concept took hold during the pandemic as demand for delivery services increased.
At a location on East Santa Clara Street that formerly housed Hank Coca’s Downtown Furniture, four of the seven windows are papered with advertisements for Y-Linh Sandwiches, but the restaurant has no operating hours and is marked closed on the website. However, it still appears on newsstands as one of the lounge’s available kitchens.
“People walk by and don’t even know this is a food place,” Sam Ramani, owner of SpicePulao, one of the hall’s kitchens, told San José Spotlight. “We get those kinds of comments every day. Until last week there was no sign of opening here.”
Inside the dining room is a foyer with a handful of tables and a counter with seating. A sushi kitchen faces the street and two narrow kitchens serving tea and pizza face the dining room. A kitchen in the back, occupied only last month, is now gutted and empty.
Customers place orders at the counter through kiosks that display menus from any of the 33 restaurants that are currently open. Items from different menus can be combined into a single order. After payment, orders are transmitted by computer to the corresponding kitchens.
When the food is ready, a robot on wheels moves through the inner depths of the facility, collecting items from each kitchen and bringing them to a human who bags the order and hands it to the waiting customer.
“Right now, we have between six and nine kitchens in operation,” Coryne Turner, the facility’s associate operations manager, told San José Spotlight. “We have a total of 26 kitchens and almost all of them are rented. But there are some legal things to figure out.”
Turner is a recent employee, hired on April 29. She said business has been slow since opening in January, which she attributed to not operating at full capacity.
“We’re going to do more marketing and try to put ourselves on the map,” he said. “People don’t really know us at the moment, but the goal is to get to 100% sooner rather than later and get things rolling.”
While they try to fill the empty kitchens, several of the first tenants did not survive until opening or have since closed. Ramani said delays to the planned opening in September created serious problems for him.
“Our whole team was here, but it was locked down,” he said. “After we arrived, it took them two months to open. We were paying rent, but things weren’t working out. We are not allowed to escape the lease. “If they released us, we would leave the next day.”
The problems appear to be endemic to the CloudKitchens operation, which has nearly 100 ghost kitchen facilities across the country. According to a survey of 20 CloudKitchens locations, the average kitchen turnover rate in 2022 was 65%. Company representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some regular customers seem aware of the underlying problems. Customer Alan Jackson said he has a love-hate relationship with the food hall because the food offering keeps changing, even though it has only been open a few months.
When asked what he considers his favorite restaurant, he said it is closed, as is his second favorite.
Customer Fred James, who works in the restaurant business, said he believes the problem is the impersonal nature of the dining room and the disconnect between customers and the kitchens.
“Because this is essentially window dressing,” he told San José Spotlight, “it unintentionally creates bad behavior. You’re not dealing with people here; If you have a bad experience with a kitchen, it reflects on everyone. You’re not going to return”.
While he also has mixed feelings about the food and business model, he said he will continue to visit, hoping things work themselves out.
“I want the place to be successful,” he said. “I don’t want any place to fail. But I think everyone needs to be aware of what’s happening here.”
Contact Robert Eliason at [email protected].
