Cloud kitchens — commercial cooking facilities that have no physical dining space and cater only to deliver orders placed online — are projected to become a $2 billion industry in India by 2024, according to RedSeer Management Consulting. Cloud kitchen business is a concept of a delivery-only restaurant with no physical spacing or dine-in or takeaway counter. Customers can place online orders via third-party food aggregators or restaurant apps or through recognized websites they may display. They just require a production unit to carry on their operations and your favorite food gets delivered to your doors within minutes.
Reports suggest that the Cloud kitchen concept is marching ahead at the highest CAGR ( approx. 28% Compound Annual Growth Rate) in restaurant dynamics. According to Swiggy who introduced BrandWorks, a cloud kitchen initiative “cloud kitchens eliminate large costs associated with real estate and serving staff from a conventional restaurant thereby enabling a restaurant to focus on cooking great quality food alone.”
It enables an entrepreneur to work with more than one brand from a single location, thereby increasing the chances of managing costs better in the existing infrastructure. You can run multiple brands out of the same kitchen, and serve different demographics at the same time. Swiping off through swiggy and zomato feeds, one can find more than 30% registered cloud kitchen services and one can even see an exponential rise in the future.
But if you're thinking of starting or switching to cloud kitchen services and setting up your own brand, you cannot blindfold the struggles in the way. Gaining real-time food market confidence for cloud kitchens is a tough task because of no physical ambiance or decoratives, But quality food and unmatched taste can capture the foodie's tummies much more easily. Dependence on third-party aggregators for delivering the order would charge you 20%-35% commissions with no data of your customers, which could hurt the business in the longer run.
As you begin with your cloud kitchen business, its sustainability and survivability amongst the competitors would only come with efficient management and an uncompromisable taste. Cloud kitchens need to offer a unique taste or cuisine so that it stands out from its competitors.
Cloud kitchen businesses can outsource the procurement of kitchen wares and packaging materials and inventory management issues with a one-stop platform like Horeca Stop.
( an all-round solution for procuring issues in cloud kitchen businesses)
Points That You Consider To Run Successful Cloud Kitchen Business
With the limited ambiance cloud kitchen offers, there are other services and marketing strategies essential for cloud kitchens that would take this business to the peak of success. This includes-
OPTIMIZING ORDERING
Make the ordering processes easy through a website or app. Attracting visuals, quick loading time, the crisp menu is a must to get the traffic on your app. An offer and discounts section and a feedback section must be included on your website which would attract the foodies. You can even notify the customers via text or email about the new offers you launch for them.
SOCIAL MEDIA ADVERTISEMENT
Creating a strong social media account and updating your profile on a regular basis will bring online traffic to your cloud kitchen services. Running online ads will also work in order to get your business focused among other competitors. Post visual pictures of foods you serve. Ask your customers to give reviews and tag their social media handles as people follow a culture of clicking pictures of food and posting them in their social media stories.
LICENSING
Starting a cloud kitchen looks like an easy affair, but it also calls for minute detailing which include, food safety (FSSAI) license, health/trade license, fire license, pollution certificate, Certificate of Environmental Clearance (CEC), PFA Act Clearance Certificate, Signage license, Night Operations License, and GST registration.
PACKAGING
The crockeries have no role to play in cloud kitchens. So the first sight the customer captures is the food packaging material you used. Steal the sight. Ensure that your packaged food does not perish in the time it reaches the doors. Apart from plastic packaging, clay and paper packaging is trending which is eco-friendly as well. Reusable packaging material can also be best suited for cloud kitchen businesses. Refer to Horeca Stop Packaging Material for online bulk procurement of packaging products at minimal cost and make management of your cloud kitchen easy.
MARKET ON FOOD AGGREGATES PLATFORMS
Uplisting your cloud kitchen on third-party food aggregates gives you a heap of customers and makes the delivery of your food easy. It is recommended that the newly established brands advertise their business on aggregator portals to get better visibility and attract more customers. Cloud kitchen can patch up with these aggregators to share the customer data, their likes, choices, and preferences and run specific campaigns for the target audience. For eg. Cafe Reset By Luke Coutinho
ASSOCIATION
You can also associate with the established brands of restaurants or can even establish a multi-brand cloud kitchen.
Conclusion
It's the right time to exploit the untapped potentials of cloud kitchen businesses that parcel the taste of restaurant-made food indoors in a convenient fashion as opposed to cooking at home and classic dine-in facilities. Investing in such a business could yield a high profit in the long run. Until then, enjoy the most cheerful and rejoicing hunger chills after ordering your favorite food from your favorite cloud kitchen till it fills your tummies with the taste of sugars and spices.