SAN FRANCISCO — At 9:30 on most weeknights, Ricky Lopez, the head chef and owner of Top Round Roast Beef in San Francisco, stacks up dozens of hot beef sandwiches and sides of curly fries to serve hungry diners.
He also breads chicken cutlets for another of his restaurants, Red Ribbon Fried Chicken. He flips beef patties on the grill for a third, TR Burgers and Wings. And he mixes frozen custard for a dessert shop he runs, Ice Cream Custard.
- Of Mr. Lopez’s four operations, three are “virtual restaurants” with no physical storefronts, tables or chairs. They exist only inside a mobile app, Uber Eats, the on-demand meal delivery service owned by Uber.
- Delivery used to be maybe a quarter of my business,” Mr. Lopez, 26, said from behind Top Round’s counter, as his staff assembled roast beef and chicken sandwiches and placed them in white paper bags for Uber Eats drivers to deliver. “Now it’s about 75 percent of it.”
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