The huge restaurant chains masquerading as independents

0:01Last week I ordered a takeaway.

0:11That's me collecting my takeaway from a delivery driver. I've just ordered two totally different burgers from what appeared to be two totally different restaurants. Is there two as well? Yeah, I think so.

0:31All right, thank you, man. Cheers. You too. One burger was from what looked like an independent restaurant. The other was from a very well-known nationwide chain. But when I started eating the burgers, I noticed something. That's the exact same burger. It's the exact same patty, it's got the same bun, it's got the same lettuce. They've added slightly different elements to it to make it seem slightly different. But despite the fact that the branding is totally different, the fact that they're trying to make out that these are from totally different restaurants, if you order them side by side, I mean, look at them.

1:11You can so clearly tell these are the exact same burger. Today on Nudge, we're exploring shadow restaurants. Across the UK, huge international restaurant chains are inventing new brands on delivery apps. These brands have different names and different branding, but sell the same food from the same kitchen. Their goal is simple, to sell more food by appealing to a deep bias that most of us have for local independent restaurants over nationwide chains. Today on Nudge, I'll investigate how widespread this phenomenon is and if this type of shadow branding actually works. All of that coming up after this.

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2:39Have you ever ordered from an independent restaurant only to find out that it's a big food chain operating under another name? I hadn't. I'd heard about ghost kitchens. These are takeaway businesses that serve customers exclusively by delivery. Ghost kitchens, they don't have actual restaurants. They usually just operate out of places like industrial estates. I'd heard of that, but I had not heard of major chains selling rebranded food out of their own restaurants to make that food appear as if it's from an independent brand. They're food outlets with no storefront, no sign outside, but online.

3:16They look like totally new independent spots. Some of them aren't independent at all. Big chains like Pizza Hut, Frankie and Benny's and Barbarito operate alternative brand names on apps like Just Eat and Deliveroo. BBC journalist Rowena Hosking researched this practice for BBC Wales. Specifically, she looked in Cardiff and she found six instances of major chains rebranding their food. So she found Frankie and Benny's, who are a nationwide chain, while they were selling their food under a new brand name called Bird Box. She found TGI Fridays rebranding their food as Mother Clucker. Las Iguanas rebranded to Kick-Ass Burrito.

3:59On their delivery site, you can read that Kick-Ass Burritos describe themselves as burritos done right, fully loaded with high-quality meats and veggies. But Kick-Ass Cardiff, which is actually from Las Iguanas, doesn't even have a five-star food hygiene rating. There's more. Pizza Hut surprised me by rebranding not to a pizza company, but to Wing Street, a chicken wing restaurant. Bar Burrito, a chain of 11 stores across the UK, rebrand their food into three different shadow restaurants. Badass Burritos, Death Valley Burrito and Twisted Health Kitchen. All of these major chains also list their own food under their own real brand names as well, which means they flood the delivery market with multiple listings.

4:45Now, this is not just a problem in Cardiff. In Bristol, I found Kick-Ass Burrito and Bird Box, which are actually Las Iguanas and Frankie and Penny's. I also found new shadow restaurants that were not listed in the BBC Wales piece from January. I found one called Capri Pizza. This sounded very nice, but it was actually Prezos. Now, Prezos is a nationwide brand. I found another called Pronto Pasta, which was also just Prezo Food rebranded. rebranded. Pronto Pasta described their rigatoni bolognese as an in-house slow-cooked beef ragu. They don't mention that in-house actually means in-presso, which also lists the exact same rigatoni bolognese on their menu.

5:28I found a burger brand called Stacks, which describes its burgers as mouth-watering perfection, but all of the burgers from Stacks is actually coming from Frankie and Benny's restaurant. There's a pasta brand called Supernonna that describes itself as saying, we're pasta people who believe there's a joy and simplicity. We combine classic flavours and honest ingredients for a big hearted feast delivered to your home with speed and love. That lovely description of Supernonna's is actually just Bella Italia, a nationwide chain with over 70 different restaurants. It's not just in the west of England or in major cities.

6:06In Woking, for example, I found Roosters, a chicken restaurant with 45 chains, selling their food under two shadow restaurants, Eugrika and Wingology. Eugrika described themselves as simply great Greek food, ignoring the fact that all of that Greek food is made in a Piri Piri chicken shop. I found Bird Box, the Frankie and Benny's shadow restaurant in Sheffield, Newcastle, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Reading, Cambridge and Leeds. These shadow restaurants, they really are all over the UK. And that's partly because many of these brands running shadow restaurants come from the same group. There's a company called The Big Table Group.

6:44It is a huge restaurant conglomerate that owns Las Iguanas, Bella Italia and Frankie and Benny's. They employ 5 ,000 people and made 300 million in revenue in 2024. And they are essentially the complete opposite of an independent restaurant. Which is why so many independent restaurants are so angry about shadow restaurants. Independent restaurants say it gives the illusion of choice, while huge corporations pump out the same food from the same kitchens. For the BBC article, the journalist Hosking interviewed independent restaurant owners across Cardiff. Justina John, who runs a Tanzanian restaurant, said the practice is very sneaky.

7:23She said, It is not fair on small businesses. The only thing keeping us alive is our authenticity. Rajendra, the director of Vivo Amigo, an Indian-Mexican restaurant in Cardiff, called Shadow Restaurants a killer. He said the bigger brands can undercut the prices, they have good offers, and this is something that independents can't compete with. He wants Shadow Restaurants to be listed separately from independents. He says as things stand, it's all mixed up and customers really can't differentiate. Real independents say they feel robbed and that the system just isn't fair. James Reese, the co-owner of a Cardiff chicken store called Foul and Fury, said shadow restaurants are everywhere.

8:04His objection is that the apps were meant to level the field. But, and I quote, when they bring out five different restaurants under the same roof, now I'm not equal and the chains have more money for advertising, promos, photographers. He called the practice unethical. When asked who he thought the worst offenders were, he named Frankie and Benny's. So I decided to test Frankie and Benny's Shadow Restaurant for myself. But first, I needed to make sure I was ordering from a Shadow, Frankie and Benny's restaurant and not an actual independent. And I thought checking this would be quite difficult, but it is surprisingly easy.

8:42So next time you order your next weekend takeaway, check the address on the app. You might not be supporting who you think you are. And that's exactly what I did. Now, I used Deliveroo to order my food, but I could have used Uber Eats or Just Eat. They work in the same way as other brands. I searched for Bird Box. Now, Bird Box is the Frankie and Benny's shadow restaurant. Bird Boxes pop up all around the UK. There's one in Bristol. It's called Bird Box Cabot Circus. The logo is a close-cropped photo of a fried chicken burger on a pale cream background with the word Bird Box in italic capital letters beside a small white chicken silhouette.

9:20There is nothing so far looking at this page that suggests that this food is made in a Frankie and Benny's kitchen. Frankie and Benny's, who by the way have 90 restaurants across the UK and have been around since 1995. Bird Box has an About Us description on Deliveroo. It reads, Get some Bird Box delivered to your door. Clark yeah, crush your crispy coated chicken cravings with our flavoursome buttermilk fried chicken creations. Choose from our mouth-watering range of wings, tenders and burgers and wraps. and don't forget to make it saucy. Click it, cluck it, bird box it up. Again, there's nothing to suggest that all this food comes from an American Italian themed chain restaurant.

10:02To find out where your food is actually from, you have to click the allergens and info button here. Here you'll find a link to the Food Standards Agency website listing for the Bird Box restaurant. Click that and you'll see that the rating is actually for Frankie and Benny's. You are not able to do multiple food standard agency listings for multiple restaurants from the same location, which is why the Bird Box one links back to Frankie and Benny's. So perfect. I know that the Bird Box restaurant is actually Frankie and Benny's. So let's order some food from both and see how they compare. Now, some shadow restaurants seem to offer the exact same food as the chain restaurant.

10:41Both the Prezzo brands, Pronto Pasta and Capri Pizza, they offer the same menu. For example, from Capri Pizza, I can order a fire and honey pizza with Endugia, pepperoni, red chilies, mozzarella and honey. And from Prezzo, I can order what they call the spicy one, which has Endugia, pepperoni, red chilies, mozzarella and honey. Interestingly, the Capri Pizza version is£6 cheaper. Something we'll cover in more detail later. For Bird Box and Frankie and Benny's, the menus are slightly different in small ways. For example, one burger might have onion sauce instead of mayo, one might have shredded lettuce instead of tomatoes.

11:21But I had a hunch that the base ingredients, the bun, the burger, the fries, I reckoned they would all be the same. To test this, I ordered two burgers. One was a Cluckless Veggie Tower Burger from Bird Box. This describes itself as a juicy soya and wheat patty topped with crispy potato rosti, packed with crunchy shredded lettuce, onions, barbecue sauce between a soft bun. And from Frankie and Benny's, I ordered the Central Park Burger. This describes itself as a soya and wheat patty topped with crispy cauliflower bites, drizzled with barbecue sauce, served in a toasted bun. These two burgers are pretty similar, but one comes with cauliflower bites and the other with potato rosties.

12:03online I will be honest they look totally different the photos are different the branding of the restaurant is totally different and the descriptions are very different as well if it wasn't for the hygiene listing I really would have no idea that they were both made in the exact same restaurant so let's see what happened when I ordered them all right so we've got our two orders here they are in different packaging but it is surprisingly similar they're both the same size both in this sort of triangular shape. One is just a brown box, that's the Frankie and Benny one, whereas the Bird Box one actually lists the other Frankie and Benny brands like Stax and Kick-Ass Burritos, but doesn't actually say Frankie and Benny's, which is interesting.

12:44The only giveaway is that on the receipt it says Bird Box FB, which I assume means Frankie and Benny. Anyway, let's open them up. They've also both got the same seal, I think, as well, which may be a giveaway. Once I opened the packaging, I noticed that these two burgers looked very similar. So the look of the burgers, you can tell it's from... well, they've either got identical packaging or you can tell it's from the same place. Let's maybe look at the chips first. So these are Frankie and Benny's. Familiar looking. And then these are Bird Box. Yeah, they look identical. I tasted both of the chips and they tasted pretty much identical.

13:38Those are the same chips. Absolutely. I mean, they've got the taste of chips that are from familiar places but they are identical even weirdly the sort of where the chef has done the handwriting is even in the same place which suggests to me that the person who's put together these burgers is the same chef not even in different parts of the kitchen potentially let me explain this there was a handwritten small letter on the burger box on the burger packaging which indicated what the burger was it's something that i guess the chefs do to differentiate the orders. If this burger had been made by different chefs in different parts of the kitchen, you'd expect the handwriting to look different.

14:20You'd maybe expect them to use a different pen, but it's not. The handwriting is identical. It's made with the same pen. It's the same size in the same part of the box as well. It suggests to me that the same chef made both meals. But wow, they do look very similar. So I mean off the bat you can kind of tell the bun is the same. The burger looks identical as well. Even the sort of trimmed lettuce looks the same. The only difference is the fact that one's got potato, one's got cauliflower but it's clearly from the same place. Which just leaves us to taste it. So I'll I'll taste the Frankie and Benny's one first.

15:09It's quite nice.

15:13And then I'll taste this one from Bird Box. Wow. That's the exact same burger. It's the exact same patty. It's got the same bun, it's got the same lettuce. They've added slightly different elements to it to make it seem slightly different. but despite the fact that the branding is totally different the fact that they're trying to make out that these are from totally different restaurants if you order them side by side I mean look at them you can so clearly tell these are the exact same burger. Shadow restaurants are rife across the UK thousands of Brits every week are ordering food from what they presume to be independent niche restaurants but they're not the food they actually receive is from giant chains cooked in the same kitchens, often with the exact same ingredients.

16:03But why? Why do Prezzo, Bella Italia, Pizza Hut, Las Iguanas, Frankie and Benny's and so many others choose to do this? These chains have spent millions advertising and promoting their own brand names. Why would they ditch that in favour of a name and logo that no one has heard of before? We'll find out after the break. The Ross Simmons Show is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. I've been following Ross for a while. His podcast is great. And an episode I'd highly recommend is called Mastering Time, Prioritisation Over Productivity. He gives some really well thought out tips on how to prioritise your time, including something I care a lot about, which is how a small percentage of your efforts can drive the majority of your results.

16:50So go and listen to The Ross Simmons Show wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome back. You are listening to Nudge with me, Phil Agnew. So does this practice of creating shadow restaurants, does it actually work for these big chains? Does the branding actually change what people buy? If I think my food is from an independent restaurant, will it change what I think of the food? That's what three researchers from Penn State University studied in 2020. In their study, 164 people were shown several different restaurants. Some restaurants were clearly independent restaurants, others were obviously chains.

17:27Each of the participants was asked about their preference for different restaurant types. The findings confirm what Prezzo, Bella Italia and Pizza Hut already know. People say they like independent restaurants far more than chains. They were more likely to pick a local restaurant as their favourite restaurant than a nationwide chain. And all else being held equal, a restaurant described as locally and independently owned was 4.4 times more likely to be picked than a chain restaurant. But people won't pay extra for independence alone. The researchers found that consumers wouldn't expect to pay more just to buy from an independent restaurant, which probably explains why Prezzo's chain branded pizza is significantly more expensive than the same pizza from its shadow restaurant Capri.

18:14However, there is a problem with this study. It's not based on actual behaviour. The researchers asked participants about their opinions and attitudes, but to be certain, we have to measure that behaviour in the real world. Now, I couldn't find a study which set up a real-world experiment comparing independents to chains, but I did stumble upon a YouTube video where a prankster served chain restaurant to people but told them it was from an independent restaurant. So today I'm going to prove that a higher price doesn't always equal a higher quality by serving McDonald's to food critics at Australia's biggest luxury food convention and seeing if anybody notices that their luxury burger is just McDonald's.

18:54This is a clip from Stanley Chen's YouTube video. The plan was to buy McDonald's burgers but rebrand them as an independent restaurant he called Mark Donholt. First off, I created a McDonald's knockoff called Mark Donholds and stole a bunch of McDonald's marketing. When pitching Mark Donholds, Stanley described the McDonald's burger as if he was describing an independent burger company. It's just 100 % grass-fed beef from Iceland. Full of healthy fats and collagen, forts, joints and all that. Who makes it? Aiman. So Aiman does the bread that obviously the beef is from. Essentially, Stanley Chen is doing exactly what the Shadow restaurants do, taking a chain product and rebranding it, pretending it is from an independent store.

19:39This is what's going to happen. We're going to give away as much Mark Donholtz as possible and ask people to compare it to traditional McDonald's. Now, since our slogan is Mark's Loving It, Clapped, we would also be asking them to rate our burgers on a scale of one to five claps. Stanley Chen was conducting a real-world version of that 2020 study. so do food professionals at the melbourne good food and wine show like the burgers do they notice that they're eating burgers from the world's biggest burger chain no they don't you guys want to try some burgers sure we rate things in terms of claps like we say if a burger is good it's flat how's that compare quite nice quite nice yeah it's nice quite fluffy My fluffy.

20:19I'm a chef. I'll give you 4.5. You have five clapps? Yeah. Tastes like a healthier version of a fast food burger. How does it compare to McDonald's? It tastes like a bit better. Better or worse? Healthier. Healthier. Actually just to make them for McDonald's. Wow. How does it compare to traditional McDonald's? One's good. One's good? Out of five clapps, how many clapps did you give it? 105. Five clapps? Five clapps.

20:48The food critics like the burger and they were willing to pay more for it as well. There was one more question I wanted to ask people. How much were they willing to pay for a Mark Donald's burger? I couldn't make this at home. I hate a dry burger. This is moist. From your food expert point of view, how much would you pay for a burger like this? I am from England. I would pay$20. I was walking away and she was like, That's the best burger I've ever had. It's a prank, but it really is the equivalent to what these major chains are doing. They too take their chain restaurant food and rebrand it. This allows them to benefit from the bias we all have for independent restaurants, the bias shown in that 2020 study.

21:30But that's not the only benefit these shadow restaurants receive. There's another benefit. Let's look again at each of the shadow restaurants. In each scenario, the chain, which offers a giant range of different options, creates this sub-brand that appears to just focus on one delicacy. So Prezzo's, which offers all types of Italian food, becomes Pronto Pasta, just focusing on pasta, and Capri Pizza, just focusing on pizza. Frankie and Benny's, again, all types of American and Italian food, becomes Stax Burgers. Las Iguanas, again, all types of Mexican food, becomes Kick-Ass Burritos, just focusing on burritos.

22:08Pizza Hut, which as we know is pizza, amongst other things, becomes a specialist restaurant selling chicken wings called Wing Street. So why do they do this? Well, because appearing to be an independent brand that focuses on just one cuisine will massively help that brand. Appearing to specialise makes the restaurant appear higher quality. This is due to something that I've spoken about plenty of times on the podcast before, a psychological bias called the goal dilution effect. Now some of you will have heard this but it's important to reiterate because it is why this works for these brands. Back in 2007, 97 University of Chicago undergraduates were lied to.

22:46They were told they would be reviewing scientific articles, and in reality, the researchers were monitoring how one tiny change to that article could alter their perception. The students read three articles on the benefits of aerobic exercise, tomatoes, and caffeines. Each article was 80 words in length. However, there was always a twist. Half the students read that, for example, the tomatoes only provided just one health benefit, preventing heart cancers. The other students read that those tomatoes supported two health benefits, preventing heart cancers and degenerative eye disease. Every student was then asked how effective tomatoes were at achieving those health benefits.

23:25And they found that when the students read about two goals, they gave a lower rating of 4.68 out of seven than those who read about one goal. They rated it at 5.14 out of 7, that's 9.3 % higher. Counterintuitively, listing multiple benefits reduced the perceived effectiveness of the product. Prezzo, who offer pizzas, salads, meat dishes, and pasta, have created shadow kitchens that specialise pronto pasta and capri pizza. This focus on a specific delicacy makes the food appear higher quality. Real, non-shadow restaurants have benefited from the gold dilution effect themselves. There is an Irish burger joint called Bunsen Burgers that have grown to five stores across Ireland, despite offering a menu so small that they can fit their six options onto the back of a business card.

24:17They focus on just offering a good beef burger, and that focus, I think, helped them grow. Rory Sutherland joked about creating a coffee shop called Flat White or F Off. In January 2026, graphic designer Charlie Hurst took this idea to heart and created the flat white or F-off pop-up store in London. The shop denied customers syrups, large cups, even oat milk, and by focusing on one drink, the cafe could promise better flat whites. Real independent restaurants that do specialise in a speciality deserve this subconscious preference. But shadow restaurants, they do not deserve it. They don't deserve it because they're not really specialising.

24:57Bird Box don't actually focus on chicken burgers. Their food comes from a kitchen that makes full English fry-ups, garlic bread, chicken wings, carbonara, ribs, steaks, pizza, and even what they call a caliza, half pizza, half calzone. Lovely. This is why independent restaurants are so annoyed. Frankie and Benny's aren't a specialised burger joint, so they shouldn't be allowed to market themselves in that way. They are hiding important information to bolster their image, and I think this is a form of manipulation. And I think these shadow restaurants manipulate consumers in three ways. First, they play on our inbuilt bias for independent restaurants.

25:36Second, the shadow brands give the illusion of specialisation, meaning the chains benefit from the gold dilution effect without actually having to specialise. And third, they flood the market with multiple listings, reducing the likelihood that a buyer will even find an independent option on delivery apps. That is why real independent restaurants hate these shadow kitchens. And worryingly, many customers don't even seem to notice. I read all 127 reviews for Bird Box in Bristol, and not a single one mentions that the food is actually from Frankie and Benny's. The reviews from Capri Pizza are totally misguided.

26:18One from last month praised Capri as the best new place in town. but Prezzo's has been open in Bristol for 13 years. Customers are being misled. They don't realise that these stores are actually shadow restaurants for big chains. But if they did know, they probably wouldn't buy the food because most of us prefer our food from independent restaurants. So next time you order online, check where your food actually comes from. You might realise that the independent pizzeria behind that beautifully photographed Neapolitan pizza is neither independent nor, strictly speaking, a pizzeria.

26:54Thank you for listening, folks. That's all for today's episode of Nudge. If you enjoyed today's show, you'll probably also like the weekly newsletter I send out. Every week, I spend 18 hours scouring through papers in behavioural science and marketing psychology, and I take the best tip I have found and I share it in my Friday newsletter. The newsletter is completely free. 12 ,000 of you read it every week. And if you haven't signed up, but you would like to, you can do so by going to nudgepodcast.com that is nudgepodcast or one word dot com and clicking newsletter in the menu thank you again for listening i'll be back next monday for another episode of nudge but first i might treat myself to an actual proper takeaway bye