Tuesday, June 1, 2021

Ghost kitchen companies are now competing to game the algorithm on food delivery services

Long article at the Verge about restaurants that sometimes house 12 different brands, and the various companies competing to dominate delivery service orders:

“With the virtual brands thus far, a lot of it really boils down to search optimization,” says Melissa Wilson, a principal at the food service consulting company Technomic. Just as the incentives and constraints of Google search or Facebook’s News Feed gave rise to certain emergent styles — the keyword-crammed headline, the clickbait tease — digital brands are converging on a distinctive form. Because people search for food on delivery apps in much the same way they search for anything else online — by product type rather than brand — specific restaurant names like The Bergen, named after the street it’s on, or even Denny’s and Red Robin, are too opaque. 

...

Soon, he was selling burgers under the names of Chef Burger, Burger Mansion, Hey Burger, and MrBeast Burger. Wings were sold under the names CHICKS, Wild Wild Wings, Crispy Wings, Killer Wings, Firebelly Wings, and The Wing Dynasty.

...

“Instead of saying buffalo wings, they might say classic wings,” he goes on. “It’s the same exact wing, man. 

A group of fisherman in Yemen stumbled upon $1.5 million worth of ambergris

BBC has a short documentary on the life-changing find.

Middle East Eye describes how the group was lucky to have an expert among them because he had been displaced from his usual fishing grounds due to the ongoing civil war:

“When the fishermen passed by a large dead fish, a fisherman displaced from Hodeidah shouted to other colleagues, as he recognised it as a sperm whale,” Abdulrahman*, one of the fishermen who retrieved the whale, told Middle East Eye.

“Hodeidah’s fishermen have experience in recognising sperm whales from others. We had passed by that same dead fish more than once, and we didn’t give it any attention as the sea is full of dead fish. But the displaced fisherman's experience made the difference.”

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“The displaced fisherman was in a boat with other fishermen, and more were in another boat nearby, but they couldn’t bring the dead whale to the coast alone,” Abdulrahman recalls.

“So they asked nine boats to help them and they brought the dead whale to a beach

U.S. Paratroopers raided a Bulgarian olive oil factory by mistake during a NATO exercise

Army Times:

“On May 11, soldiers entered and cleared a building next to the airfield that they believed was part of the training area, but that was occupied by Bulgarian civilians operating a private business,” according to a U.S. Army Europe and Africa statement released today. “No weapons were fired at any time during this interaction.”

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Bulgarian journalist [] posted security camera video of the daytime raid on her Twitter account. She reported that the owner of the factory had filed a lawsuit after the event.


"Amazon Calls Warehouse Workers 'Industrial Athletes' In Leaked Wellness Pamphlet"

Vice:

the company describes warehouse workers as “industrial athletes” and details how its Working Well program will help workers by laying out guidelines to “prepare their bodies” for walking “up to 13 miles a day” or lifting “a total of 20,000 pounds” during a shift.  

"Here at Amazon, you will become an industrial athlete. Just like an athlete who trains for an event, industrial athletes need to prepare their bodies to be able to perform their best at work," the pamphlet reads.

Today's funny posts




Ceramic reef; A surprising homage to a famous theme song; St. Louis's "Veiled Prophet Ball"












The Looney Tunes that time forgot; Amazing, disturbing iconography; Good X-Men cover