New trends see people choosing to order out and eat at home rather than venture out to restaurants, which presents a huge market opportunity for delivery companies. Whether there is Covid or not, the expansion of the delivery-only meal preparation business is inevitable. To assist their businesses and provide better services to their clients during the pandemic, the leading market participants in the food industry developed a number of innovative features.
One such trend is “Cloud or Dark Kitchen,” which refers to the transformation of sit-down eateries or restaurants into delivery-only businesses or “dark kitchens,” which has proven to be the best strategy for surviving in online food market in the future. The global cloud/dark kitchen market was estimated to be worth USD 700 million in 2018 and is projected to increase at a CAGR of 17.25 percent from 2017 to 2030, according to a Goldstein Market Intelligence report.
Here are some advantages of investing in cloud/dark kitchens;
- Turn-key solution
It’s a plug-and-play solution made to work without much investment in restaurant needs such as extra staff, equipment, licenses, space, and other overheads. It’s a modern solution that serves changing needs in the industry and has room for accommodating varying interests.
The model relies on delivery which can be outsourced thus reducing logistical pressure and focusing on quality food.
- Ease to experiment menu and new customers at your fingertips
The kitchens can be easily targeted and mobile in case of the need to change the location for a better market. The concept of a container kitchen enables flexibility of design and mobility from one area to another as well as reduced setting up/building time.
- Ease in scaling operations and managing orders on one tablet
Mobile applications are now taking over customer product experience and interaction and dark kitchens use these to present their food for consideration. This cuts down on costs while achieving optimum customer attention.
- Build multiple food concepts
The dark kitchens give one room to build multiple cuisines out of a single kitchen without affecting customer choice or brand association. This is because open restaurants are usually branded with their specialty to attract attention while dark kitchens can serve various customer needs.
Professional kitchens fit out from design and supply to maintenance making these mobile kitchens able to fit multiple kitchen equipment that can prepare a number of cuisines.
- Lower investment costs, higher profits and lesser time to break even
The dark kitchens concept lowers operation costs considerably thus increasing profit margins. Ism Containers in Westlands Nairobi fabricates these containers and fits them with the kitchens ready for your preferred locations.
- Essential characteristics of Cloud/Dark kitchens
There is no physical client presence and this leads to minimal wastage, lesser risk, room to attract a wider audience, and multiple designs of the kitchens offering a wide variety of menus.
Henson Kitchens designs and fits out dark kitchens in Kenya. They do this hand in hand with ISM Containers who designs and fabricate mobile dark kitchens using used shipping containers.
The cloud/dark kitchens model, if well executed will affect the traditional food delivery businesses as the container kitchens can be mobile and placed closer to the people for faster and reliable food distribution. Using mobile applications technology easily picks nearby container kitchens and their respective menus making it even more reliable and interactive. With everything going mobile, dark kitchens and container kitchens seem to be the future of the urban food business.