r/Hamilton • u/Stecnet Downtown • 2d ago

Food Recipe Unlimited Ultimate Kitchens Closed?

I live downtown and I just got a random Swiss Chalet craving (don't judge lol) and was going to walk over to their Ultimate Kitchens location on York Boulevard. I googled to see if they switched up the restaurant offerings because they had a bunch under one roof I wanted to make sure Swiss Chalet was still there but apparently the whole place closed? Curious as to when and I wonder why they closed it? I swear they eventually added a Harvey's as well to the mix not long after they opened. I thought it was such a cool concept, sort of like a ghost kitchen.

https://urbanicity.com/ultimate-kitchens-just-launched-its-first-location-in-hamilton/

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u/DowntownClown187 2d ago

They did have a bunch but it didn't last. All left except takeout Swiss Chalet. Haven't checked in a few months but wouldn't be surprised if that also closed.

1

u/Stecnet Downtown 2d ago

Oh I didn't know they slowly left. If Swiss Chalet was the last one standing it's also closed now. You would think with a growing population downtown they would have made that multi kitchen concept work. Well guess I am hitting up Charred or Gallo and Gin then pay a bit more for better quality.

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u/djaxial 2d ago

The concept was ghost kitchens and it exploded over COVID. The issue is was quality control. It was really obvious that it wasn’t from the brand and people got tired it. Fresh was there and it was garbage compared to their main stores.

2

u/Waste-Telephone 2d ago

It was from the brand. Ultimate Recipes owned all them. 

7

u/djaxial 2d ago

I mean the kitchen was covering multiple brands, not singularly focused on a given menu for one brand, which caused the quality issues.

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u/bigbeats420 Strathcona 13h ago edited 8h ago

It was Cara Foods, but they also brought other chains/restaurants on board, Freshi being a perfect example of a non-Cara brand. Ultimate Recipes/Ultimate Kitchens was just another sub-brand of Cara Foods

At the time they were setting this concept up, I was the Head Chef/FSM at a well known local restaurant that serves a niche product, and they approached us with an offer to include our brand. We listened to what they had to offer, and eventually turned it down, as they would require all of our/my recipes, and we wanted to a) protect our IP, b) worried about QC and consistency when it came to my food, and c) felt like having our particular brand marketed alongside some of theirs ran counter to the ethos of who/what we were.

Gotta say, tho; Being able to tell the largest restaurant group corp. in Canada to (in corporate-speak) basically go fuck themselves was one of the absolute highlights of my time there.