Between urbanization, singles and small families migrating to bigger and different cities alike, managing a busy lifestyle, cooking took a back seat, because now people don’t just want to go out for leisure but food was something they had to eat at the comfort of home. All of this, invented the need for food. Which in turn gave birth to various food ordering apps as we have come to know it today. This pushed the fine dining and restaurant models to shift more to food delivery and Cloud Kitchens started trending.
What is a cloud kitchen?
A cloud kitchen is more of a food preparation outlet that provides no seating, or dine-in experience. They function as a production unit with a space for the preparation of food, accepting orders online or “from the cloud” i.e. via app or website and then dispatching it to the location by restaurant’s own or third-party delivery logistics.
Pros and Cons of a Cloud Kitchen-
The pros-
- Easy to start since it requires setting up such a kitchen could be anywhere between 300 sq ft to 500 sq ft.
- Lower operational cost because it is not a brick and mortar model.
- They can use the budget to advertise or even give competitive pricing.
- It is Less risky. Since, there is not a burning cost of setting up, the focus is much more on making the food better and breaking even much sooner than the dine-in models.
- They can flexibly manage their operations from one single POS.
The cons-
- Dependency on the internet all the time, which is in itself a challenge in India.
- Customers can move away quickly. Since there is no external factor to influence, the loyalty of a customer is only to the food. And the experimental generation of today, likes to taste varieties of food. Without an actual restaurant being present it can get difficult to maintain brand presence all the time and then pull them to order online.
- India is still not ready to leave brick and mortar. However there is a slow shift towards Cloud kitchens/dark kitchens, but they become limited to a section of generation. Dining out is still considered to be safer and more experiential than ordering online.
Who is it profitable for-
Cloud kitchens can be profitable for smaller enterprises like food trucks, home-based cooks or start-up food ventures and those who’re interested in doing into the food business but have no prior restaurant experience. Cloud kitchens can also be explored as a potential option for existing brick and mortar restaurants looking to scale up, and not having high expansion budgets.
Food Franchise IN 