Ghost Kitchen Company Reef Technology Owes Multnomah County $3,895
The Miami-based company Reef Technology, which operates a number of ”ghost kitchen” trucks across the city preparing fast food for delivery, currently owes $3,895 to Multnomah County for consulting services, inspection fees and permit fees.
The unpaid invoices date back to the spring of 2021.
The county’s consulting services which were focused on health and sanitary requirements for its food cart pods and ghost kitchen trucks. Despite multiple emails from Multnomah County officials, asking Reef employees and managers to immediately pay their invoices, Reef has yet to reimburse the county for those consultations, records obtained by WW show.
“Our front office supervisor asked me to pass along past due invoices to your organization concerning consultation work we provided to you; invoices were initially sent to you Feb 1, 2021,” a county health inspector wrote to a Reef manager on Aug. 9, 2022. “Please provide delinquent payment to Multnomah County ASAP.”
Jeffrey Martin, Environmental Health Manager for the Multnomah County Health Department, says that “all of those invoices still appear to be unpaid”—as do the inspection and permit fees.
Reef’s corporate office did not respond to WW’s request for comment.
Perhaps a handful of delinquent fees to the county seem unimportant. But Reef is no mom-and-pop restaurant: It’s a company that was swollen with cash in 2020 with the infusion of $1 billion in funding from overseas investors like SoftBank and an investment arm of the government of Abu Dhabi. Reef’s grand plan: transform urban parking lots in major cities into micro-communities with retail, food, electrical vehicle charging stations and fulfillment centers.
Reef also manages the majority of the parking lots in downtown Portland (it bought out three of the biggest national parking companies in 2019 and took over all of their management contracts), though WW reported earlier this month that it’s losing some of its most meaningful contracts with property owners. That includes contracts with Metro for the Expo Center and Convention Center, for Moda Center parking lots, and with the Downtown Development Group.
And about half of Reef’s 22 permitted ghost kitchen trucks, most of which sell between 5 and 10 fast food brands for delivery only, are shuttered or missing entirely from their listed addresses.
Earlier this month, Reef declined to answer questions specific to Portland’s operations.
Additionally, none of the Reef-managed food cart pods sitting on Reef-managed parking lots in downtown Portland ever obtained a food pod license that’s required by the county. That’s despite half a dozen emails form health inspectors since the beginning of the year, obtained by WW through a records request, telling Reef managers to apply.
Gloss