Food has always been one of the major attractions for all and the business associated with it had a typical pattern. The restaurants and hotels that served delicious food generally had the same idea of catering to people when they checked into the restaurants for meals. Lately, the concept has changed a little and is expected to change a lot in the coming future. Technology has started impacting almost every sector of business these days. However, the food and beverage industry is probably the last one to surrender to its spell. Earlier, the restaurant business was related to individual efforts and ownership concepts. Gradually the franchise models evolved and swept away the market by a storm. But the latest addition to this business domain has been the introduction of the concept called cloud kitchen.
A cloud kitchen, unlike the conventional restaurant arrangements, does not offer you dine-in facilities. It does not have a place where you can sit back with your family, relax and place the order to be served by the caterer. To avail food from the cloud kitchen, all you have to do is just place an order online, and the food will be delivered to you within a specified time at your doorstep. You neither have to travel to a restaurant nor have to manage time to taste the delicious restaurant foods anymore with cloud kitchens. These are more like food factories serving food according to your order. Surely it can be regarded as a revolutionary move as far as the food and beverage industry is concerned. Since the orders are placed online; the kitchens have the term cloud added to them.
Cloud kitchens are expected to expand in volume as the market response to this new arrangement has been quite positive. People are happy to have an arrangement that can offer them food delivered at the doorstep minus any hassle. Moreover, with the cloud kitchen, one does not have to think of taking out some separate time to visit the restaurants to taste some finger-licking food every time. Besides, one can easily enjoy the favorite dishes sitting at the cozy comfort of the room.
Read on to know some of the advantages of cloud kitchens.
Table of Contents
Low Operational Cost
The operational costs of the restaurants are known to be much higher than many other varieties of businesses. The real estate prices are rising high, and the establishment cost of the restaurants are also becoming higher as a result. This has led to infeasible business practices for restaurants in the past. Moreover, with the global trends changing rapidly to keep up with the lifestyle changes, most of the couples work these days and hardly get any time out to visit the restaurants over the weekends. Instead, most of the people enjoy staying home during the weekends to spend some quality time together. Hence, the cloud kitchen seems to be the perfect idea at the right time. It does not require substantial space to accommodate the dine-in facilities which automatically cut down the establishment costs. Moreover, the people trying to have some good food at home can place the orders online without driving through the busy roads to reach the restaurant of their choice during the weekends or any other day.
Competitive pricing
Market surveys have revealed the fact that whereas many of the customers find the prices of the food to be pretty high, the restaurant authorities are finding it hard to run the show. Hence, there is no chance that the prices would come down, and therefore the customers will seldom visit the restaurants making the food business all more troublesome for the owners. On the other hand, the cloud kitchens are not required to be set up in prime locations involving a substantial space as the customers will never pay a visit to the food factories. Therefore, cloud kitchen can offer food at a considerably lower price. Since most of the couples are working these days, if the prices of the food can be kept competitive, many would prefer buying them regularly. Hence, a cloud kitchen has every potential to add up to the business by offering quality food at reasonable price.
Food Quality
Traditional dine-in restaurants handle a lot of problems related to operations. The overhead cost of running the restaurant is also substantial. Owing to so many other concerns, the owners seldom get time to experiment with the menu or improve it. However, a cloud kitchen has a wide opportunity to make the quality of food better as it does not have to deal with any ancillary problem. The cloud kitchen follows the concept of making food that is good for health and tastes like homemade food. Some customers prefer buying food regularly from the cloud kitchen. Hence, the owners also try to keep the quality to good to keep up the business.
Automation
From preparing the food to packaging it, many tasks are done using automation in cloud kitchen companies. This makes operations more efficient and less time-consuming. To get the automation functioning properly, the cloud kitchen companies keep the list of items limited and try to maintain the best standards to keep the customers coming back. The startup cloud kitchen businesses are trying to integrate more technology with the process to make it more efficient and productive.
No innovation or idea is void of its drawbacks. The cloud kitchen is no exception as well. Here are some of the challenges that the cloud kitchen companies are facing right now. However, with meticulous execution, most of these can be handled.
- The real estate and overhead costs of the traditional restaurants have been replaced with the technological cost of operation in cloud kitchen.
- To lower the cost of food, sometimes the standards are hygiene not followed and maintained properly.
In a nutshell, change is inevitable. And, cloud kitchen is surely the next best thing about the food and beverage industry. With a little care and caution, the best services can be availed, keeping the negatives under control.
