A DoorDash customer says that she ordered from Maggiano’s Little Italy but suspects that her food actually came from a Chili’s restaurant.
In a TikTok posted on April 17, TikToker Diana Chavez (@_dianaaaa13) shows the food she and her boyfriend ordered, which was delivered in a Maggiano’s bag. She says she got “scammed” by DoorDash after noticing that her order was cheaper than expected and delivered from an address that was closer to her than the Maggiano’s restaurant she thought she ordered from.
“It’s fuckin’ Chili’s,” Chavez says about the address that Maggiano’s was listed under on DoorDash. “I’m literally shook.” By Tuesday, the TikTok had been viewed over 306,000 times.
Commenters on Chavez’s video brought up the concept of ghost kitchens, defined by the New York Times as “off-site meal-preparation facilities that are untethered from physical restaurants.” Many restaurants utilized ghost kitchens before the pandemic, but as delivery and takeout orders boomed when restaurants weren’t serving sit-down customers, ghost kitchens became even more popular.
The implication is that Chavez could have ordered from a Maggiano’s ghost kitchen rather than the actual restaurant. Chili’s and Maggiano’s are operated by the same parent company, Brinker International.
Other commenters wrote that the same thing had happened to them—or almost happened.
“The same exact thing happened to me,” @hardyboyblue commented. “I thought I got Maggianos from South Coast and got the same thing you did.”
“That makes so much sense now,” @marlene1532 wrote. “I was going to order, but I don’t have a Maggianos in town, how is it possible?”
Chavez clarified in the comments that the quality of her food “wasn’t comparable to Maggiano’s” and that it was “Chili’s quality.”
The Daily Dot reached out to Chavez via TikTok comment and to Chili’s and Maggiano’s via contact forms. The Daily Dot also requested comment from DoorDash.
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