The COVID 19 pandemic has caused the dine- in restaurant business to reckon with the possibility of pivoting their businesses towards food delivery and home delivery. Cloud kitchens are restaurants with a base kitchen and no shopfront. It conducts all of its business transactions online and makes sure that the prepared food reaches your doorstep. Cloud kitchen India has an immense untapped potential. There are a growing number of people who crave late night food and search for food delivery near me, kitchens near me, takeout and other variations of these searches. So if you want to meet these demands while earning a tidy profit, opening a cloud kitchen is the way to go. Here’s everything that you need to know about opening and running a cloud kitchen business.
- Location of the Commercial Kitchen: Commercial equipment kitchen is a kitchen that is available to cloud kitchen owners on rent. It is usually located in a non central, non premium location in order to keep the price of the property and hence the rent low. The food is cooked according to the orders the chefs receive online, packed and directly delivered to its destination. Commercial kitchens do not need more than 300 square feet space for their functioning and therefore you do not need to rent a larger space. In case the space is large, it can be shared with other brands in order to cut costs. The kitchen should not be too far away from the target delivery area, otherwise the quality of food would deteriorate.
- Permissions, legal certificates and licenses: Obtaining proper licenses, certificates and permissions is of utmost importance. The most important ones include NOC from the fire department, FSSAI standards and GST registration. You want your business to be fully legal and certified for hygiene standards and safety. This not only avoids legal troubles but gives a sense of assurance to the customers.
- Kitchen equipment: The restaurant kitchen equipment depends on the kind of food that you are serving. If you are a dessert specific restaurant then you’d have to invest in ovens and ice cream makers. The basic kitchen equipment also includes a stove, refrigerator, spoons, ladles knives et al. The kitchen also needs to have packaging boxes and material because the food is directly delivered from these kitchens.
- Staff: A cloud kitchen requires minimal staff as it does not have a front. The staff members would include chefs and people who help in the kitchen and with packaging. The staff would also involve a delivery fleet depending on your demand and your budget.
- An app or a website to receive orders and payment: Since cloud kitchen is a business that is made possible through the internet, the company needs to have its own app or website where customers can look it up and order food. The restaurant storefront equivalent of a cloud kitchen business would be its website. Thus, one should make it a point to invest properly into the creation of a fully functioning website which displays the brand in its full glory.
- A marketing plan: A proper marketing plan is necessary for establishment as well as the growth of your business. It is important to have an engaging strategy in place so that your brand can get more and more orders and build a loyal customer base. This plan involves utilizing social media apps to really show what your business is all about and to project a vision that people would like to buy into.
- Partnership with aggregators: Aggregators like Zomato and Swiggy are already established in the marketplace. It is a smart business decision therefore, to forge a partnership and to take advantage of their marketing and delivery services in order to get more orders.
