With the advent of modern day restaurant delivery applications, there is a new trend of "virtual restaurants" popping up around the country and San Diego's Ike's Place in Hillcrest has launched one of their own. Fanboy's Cheesesteaks & Cheesecakes is now delivering around America's Finest City exclusively through UberEATS.
Mobile food delivery apps are reshaping the modern restaurant industry, inspiring "virtual restaurants" that exist exclusively online. Many of these virtual restaurants operate from within already-established brick-and-mortar concepts but offer a unique menu available solely through third-party delivery services like Postmates, UberEATS, GrubHub and DoorDash. This allows restaurateurs to test new concepts and dishes without the added expenses of a storefront lease and build-out, marketing costs, and increased staff. In addition to forthcoming food delivery aerial drones, Uber Eats believes its path to food delivery domination is the addition of more delivery-only eateries. There is currently an estimated 2,000 virtual restaurants operating on UberEATS around the globe.
San Francisco-based Ike's Place, which operates three locations around San Diego, is the latest brand to launch a virtual restaurant. Now available via UberEATS, Fanboy's Cheesesteaks & Cheesecakes offers an array of sandwiches and desserts prepared from within the Ike's location in Hillcrest. Fanboy's has a menu featuring ten "West Coast Cheesesteaks", nine "Air Fried Chicken Sandwiches", a pair of He-Man-inspired $25 sandwiches, and several desserts.
Ike's Place is the creation of Ike Shehadeh, who first launched his namesake sandwich shop in San Francisco in 2007 and now has more than 55 locations around California and Arizona. Ike's Place offers a menu of pop-culture named sandwiches on freshly baked bread, as well as a rumored list of over 400 "secret" sandwich possibilities. Widely known for its famed "Dirty Secret Sauce" and Dutch Crunch bread, Ike's first entered San Diego in Fall 2015 with the opening of its 1,100 square-foot fast-casual eatery within The Hub retail shopping center in Hillcrest. In fall 2018, a second San Diego Ike's opened in the Midway District of Point Loma. Earlier this year, a third San Diego location of Ike's unveiled in the Gaslamp.
