Some of the restaurants on a delivery app have no shopfront, no tables and no sign on the street. They’re virtual brands, menus that exist only online and are cooked in a kitchen already trading under another name.
Uber Eats describes a virtual restaurant on its merchant help pages as a chance to “innovate your menu, while running out of an existing kitchen”. Its pitch to restaurant owners is direct. “On average, restaurants increase sales by 45% after adding a Virtual Restaurant,” the page says, without giving a source for the figure.
For restaurants weighing that pitch, Stats NZ’s retail trade survey for the June 2026 quarter showed food and beverage services sales volumes down 2.8% on the March quarter.
What the apps require
Uber Eats and DoorDash both put rules around virtual brands, and both tie them to a licensed kitchen.
Uber Eats’ New Zealand merchant terms, last updated in June 2025, require licences for every location a merchant sells from, “including any Virtual Storefront location”. A food seller must hold “a national programme registration or food control plan with a delivery component”. Item descriptions and photos must be “accurate and not misleading”.
DoorDash spells out more detail in its New Zealand help centre. Virtual brands must “operate out of a licensed commercial kitchen” and can’t run from home kitchens. At least half the main menu items have to differ from every other menu DoorDash lists at the same address, and each address can carry no more than 10 virtual brands unless DoorDash approves more in writing.
DoorDash also says a virtual brand that copies the name, logo or menu of a real restaurant “will be immediately deactivated” by its fraud team. Food photos must be real, and the page rules out “evidently AI-generated images”.
How to look up the kitchen
The Food Act 2014 is the law behind those licences. A food control plan has to set out the name, trading name and business address of the business it covers, and of the operator running it.
Those details go on a public register. Schedule 5 of the Act says the register exists partly “to enable members of the public to know” which businesses operate under a plan and who runs them.
The Ministry for Primary Industries points diners to it. “Most food businesses must be registered and verified under the Food Act 2014. You can check if a business is registered by searching our public register,” MPI says on its guide to buying food online.
The register’s search takes a business ID, name or address. It can be filtered by registration authority, so a Christchurch search can be narrowed to Christchurch City Council, and Selwyn and Waimakariri District Councils appear as separate registration authorities.
MPI’s other tips apply to any app listing. It suggests looking for a company name, physical address and contact details, and asking the seller to show their food registration if you’re unsure. If a virtual brand’s name doesn’t turn up, the kitchen’s street address is another search term, where the seller lists one.
Where the law draws the line
Both apps let a kitchen run more than one brand. How each brand presents itself falls under the Fair Trading Act 1986, which the Commerce Commission enforces.
Section 9 bans conduct in trade that is “misleading or deceptive or is likely to mislead or deceive”. Section 13 bans false or misleading claims about “the place of origin of goods or services”, or that a service is supplied by a particular person.
For a Canterbury operator weighing up a virtual brand, those sections reach the brand’s name, story and menu copy. A listing that claims a suburb, a family history or a chef the kitchen doesn’t have could fall within them.
The Food Act’s wording also matters at registration. Because a food control plan lists the business’s trading name, an operator adding a new brand name can ask their registration authority whether the plan needs updating before the brand goes live on Uber Eats or DoorDash.
For diners, MPI’s advice holds whatever the brand. If delivered food smells off or looks wrong, take a photo, tell the seller, and lodge a food complaint with New Zealand Food Safety.
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