Bright Side Of Cloud Kitchens

From the lack of transparency in terms of hygiene to uneven taste for similar food items, traditional restaurants have had several points to make about the rise of steady competitors like cloud kitchens.

- Debroop Roy

The food and beverages (F&B) market has come a long way from being restricted to a few days of eating out or special occasions of ordering in. With the advent of companies such as Swiggy, the way people look at food consumption has changed dramatically. That favourite dish from your favourite restaurant no longer means waiting for a weekend. One click and you are away!

As the food landscape has transformed, new concepts have found their way in. The most popular among them is something that has brought cheer and anguish in equal measure. Cloud kitchens or dark kitchens are essentially food joints with no storefront and a delivery-only model. This model, by cutting down on so many different costs compared to a traditional restaurant, helps keep the margins going at a time when consumers are becoming more and more price-conscious. The online food delivery market, which was valued at Rs 45.58 billion in 2017, is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of about 38.08 per cent between 2018 and 2023, according to a report by Research on Global Markets published last year. Of the total market size, dark kitchens constituted 30 per cent in 2017, the report said.

The dark kitchen conference at Indian Restaurant Congress 2019 saw the participation of several names from across the Indian F&B industry, where topics ebbed and flowed from the different needs both restaurants and dark kitchens serve to the increasing usage of data in the space.

Experiences Cannot Change

According to chef Harpal Singh Sokhi, the F&B space is going through a learning curve at the moment and brands, irrespective of their model, need to focus on customer experience. While the idea of eating out at a restaurant does involve an experience for the customer, even those ordering in expect an experience from their food, said Sokhi.

“Experience of taste cannot change, that is the bottomline,” he said.