Ghost Kitchen

A kitchen that's invisible that magically makes yummy goodness appear in front of me?  Sign me up!

So tonight's adventure began when Rebecca texted me about the existence of Ghost Kitchen's - and more importantly, that they come with Cinnabon ;)   And I googled, mildly interested cause, well, Cinnabon...  And really didn't find what exactly it was beyond shared kitchen space, but okay - there's one in Burlington.   And they also have Cheesecake Factory?!?!   What is this craziness of wonderful expensive calories?

But it's Friday night after an INSANE two weeks (that'll get its own post) and Chris was settled into a night of gaming...   A drive out to Burlington, by my own, tunes rocking...  AND a survival treat at the end?  Suddenly that seemed an excellent idea.

So off I go with Spanish Alexa giving me instructions -- I'm getting much better at understanding those now.  Although honestly, all I wanted was the last few blocks to tell me which of a ton of stripmalls it'd be in ;)   And when I got there, I realized the instructions were entirely unneeded.

It's neither small nor hidden

I definitely had a moment when I pulled in to park as the store was empty.  In fact, other than that the lights were all on, it didn't look much like a store?  No people, no cash register, no...  Anything really.  I think I had in my head that'd be like a gas station convenience type store with diff types of fast food in different sections of the store.  Suffice to say it was not.   And the parking spaces all had a QR code for car pickup.  But of course, I hadn't ordered anything.  hmmmm

So I was about to go to read all the COVID type signs on the door and find out how I should acquire food when two young women pulled up and parked next to me, seemed to have the same discussion, but much faster than I (admittedly I may have been still rocking out a bit - ME time, remember ;) - decided too try to go in the store.  They also paused at the door but then went in, so I deemed that was probably the right solution.

Inside there are two ordering screens and one marketing wall mostly showing ALL the yummy things.  Then at the far end an old-school (think Blockbuster movie rental) popcorn machine and a tiny counter.   There were just the three of us there, so I stayed well back while they made their choices.   Honestly - perfectly laid out for social distancing, that's for sure.

LOTS of space - IDK what the marketing wall was showing here? 🤷‍♀️ 
When I actually bothered to look at it while waiting for food, it was all food.

When it was my turn to order I learned of just how big the range of yummy  goodness is (or will be anyways).   All kinds of options and very easy menu to navigate.   Alas, they were all out of Ben and Jerry's, but I did successfully acquire celebratory cheesecake and tomorrow's breakfast complements of Cinnabon ;)

Lots of things to pick from

Then I waited all by myself for a bit - no signs of life anywhere...  But I figured food would magically appear as it had for the two women ahead of me.   And sure enough, a disembodied voice announce my number, then a person appeared for a second or two to deposit my bags on the table and quickly disappeared again.

And it was done.  Total human interaction = brief sighting of another human and that's it.   AND the Cinnabons were warm!   I mean, not super helpful as they're for breakfast and honestly just made me want to eat them now.  But conceptually it was a lovely touch ;)   Even when you get them actually *from* Cinnabon, they're not usually warm.

So yeah.  Not a bad, if very unexpected, way to spend my evening.