2/ The main problem of ghost kitchens is that their brand power is very low.
They can create a "fake restaurant" website, logo, and brand.
But no storefront → people don't know about them unless they discover them on UberEats & co, or paid advertisement.
3/ Influencers, conversely, have a brand and an audience.
If they're famous enough, their bottleneck is to find high-conversion products that they can sell over and over.
Restaurants are such an option, but opening real ones requires capital, time, and competence.
4/ Enter ghost kitchens. They can be subcontracted. They can produce what you want (within limits). They can allow you to scale nationwide in a fraction of real franchises.
If you can bring them customers and can differentiate their brand enough (which influencers can).
5/ Of course, it's not a perfect solution. For example, you can't expect a McDonald's level of standardization.
But my hunch are that most of the audience doesn't care. The brand they come for doesn't stand for standardization.
6/ I'm quite bullish on this new phenomenon.
Let's see. The (relatively) low barriers of entry and the fact that one ghost kitchen can produce for multiple influencers and sell under multiple brands means that we'll probably see more of this.
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Motivations: most other measures can be argued, "we did bad, because we took a different tradeoff". This one hardly can.
We can argue on tradeoffs re: top speed (eg, mandatory or voluntary? Everyone or at-risk-only?) but the initial acceleration should be a target for all.
The purpose wouldn't be, of course, to make a ranking. It's not a zero-sum competition.
Instead, it would be to be a benchmark, and an eye-opener on what's possible and on the opportunity costs of lacking competence.
2/ The paper argues that using web history & similar inputs could unlock access to lending services.
For example, someone who scores just not enough on traditional screening methods used by banks could be included thanks to a virtuous search history.
3/ The above is true. However, it also means that people who would be "in" thanks to traditional screening methods could be excluded thanks to a less-virtuous search history.
More importantly, who decides what's a virtuous search history?
My cousin was born in a mountain village in the French Alps. Like many there, he learned to ski before reading.
I am a good skier, but I remember the humiliation when I was 14 and he was 6, seeing him surpass me, swift as a bullet.
2/ At a young age, he made it into the World Championships for his age bracket. Boy, he was fast.
His career came to an abrupt end a decade later, one injury at a time. First, he injured his ankle. Then, he broke his knee. A few more injuries later, he retired, too young.
3/ From him, I learned that the skiers that you see on TV, the fastest racers in the world, didn’t get there because they were the fastest.
They got there because they were the fastest of those who didn’t get injured into retirement.