We are back with another round of inresto Superstar this May!! And this month, we are thrilled as we bring to you the first of inresto superstar’s special editions.
What is ‘inresto Superstar’?
A monthly initiative to identify and recognize our partner restaurants’ phenomenal dining experience using inresto’s product suite. It is an effort to celebrate the unrelenting spirit of restaurants across the country! Restaurants spread laughter, moments of joy and create memories for a lifetime for millions of people. And to make that possible, it takes a dedicated staff and the right technology to streamline all the restaurant operations.
This month we are here to celebrate a few of such incredible restaurants that managed to do away with aggregator commissions using inresto online order, increased their profit margins, and delved into marketing solutions that have managed to raise efficiency and business for them.
What’s so special about it?
As the trying times continue to dawn upon us it’s not easy to grow your business and stay relevant among the diners. We have dug into insights and after a lot of scrutinies extracted these 3 gems, looking at their undying spirit and off-spin business strategies.
Check out the Superstars of May 2021!
1. Defence Bakery, Delhi
Based out of South Delhi, this bakery is known to craft excellent quality baked goods, which are a value for money. Their minimalist website design is pleasing to look at and provides a user-friendly experience. Check out their full website here.
2. Haldiram’s, Hyderabad
Every Indian’s go-to place when it comes to grabbing authentic and delicious Indian snacks and sweets. We sure cannot live without our dose of Haldiram’s, be it in any city. In Hyderabad, this outlet has been running food deliveries seamlessly via inresto Online Order. The mouth-watering images displayed on their digital menu are just irresistible. Check out their menu here.
3. Bombay Halwa House, Chennai
This casual dining restaurant located in North Chennai known for its North Indian delicacies has an extensive and economical menu. Bombay Halwa House is a paradise for vegetarian foodies.
With the help of their own online ordering platform and digital marketing strategies, these restaurants managed to increase their incoming online orders by 4 times. Something that calls for big applause and celebration.
A big congratulations to all the superstars! We are happy to have helped you raise your revenue, increase productivity, and improve efficiency. We wish you continued success and happy diners all year long. 🙂
Keep reaching your restaurant business goals and continue to raise the bar for fellow restaurateurs with each passing year.
In a food industry severely affected by COVID shutdowns, every business owner wants to know how to improve staffing strategy after the pandemic? If you want to know how to improve your staffing strategy after the pandemic, the first golden rule is to hire wisely, train thoroughly and utilize your staff to the best of their abilities.
Want to structure your staffing to perfection? First and foremost, find related software solutions that will give you the exact staff expenditure and provide constructive data on your staff. We have compiled a list of 9 good staffing strategies to save money in the restaurant industry.
1. Employee Automation
In the era of rapid technological advances in the food industry, your operations are incomplete without the required technical software. As more and more people adjust to working from home and prefer contactless services, you must streamline the cost of your staff while considering the value of your employees’ jobs. As a business executive, the easiest way to avoid logistical mishaps is to use scheduling software. Such software offers benefits like employee scheduling and shift planning, attendance reporting, employee time tracking, project budgeting, and other important features you could use.
2. Masters of the Future
New and sophisticated software with complex predictive mechanisms let you peek into the consequences of the change in your business operations. With such software, you’re able to store and analyse information over a long period. Further, it also gives you a better blueprint of your company’s future.
3. Maintain the Perfect Staff Balance
In addition to the above strategies, you can now optimize your employee work hours and strength according to an employee’s ability and availability, respectively.
4. Fewer Expenses, More Business
The latest scheduling software offers multiple good staffing strategies to save money in the restaurant industry the right way. Want to know what’s the icing on the cake? Check all your sales data as they happen, and you can deduce the effective measures which will enhance future business decisions. That’s a sure-shot way to the top!
5. Be Smart about Staffing Expenses
Why is technology so relevant to the restaurant business, you ask? Here’s why. It provides you comprehensive data on labour cost percentage, which is the first piece of information you really want at the start of any workday.
Other than dining outlets, most other restaurant ventures clock labour cost percentages with considerable payroll costs. For instance, you will have to pay full-time salaried workers and contractual employees, various employee incentives, overtime, payroll taxes, medical insurance, and other obligations.
However, a scheduling software helps you decide faster and manage staff better. Analysing all the above information enables you to track and improve your labour cost percentages.
6. Know your Employees
Experts have many opinions on how to improve staffing strategy in the restaurant business. They agree that you must get to know your staff better. For instance, a good business owner should know:
How are each of his employees performing?
How quickly are they imbibing the training, both upon entry and on the job?
Such information is integral to reduce turnover costs and avoid the grueling hours of training new employees.
Another tip in understanding how to improve staffing strategy is to maximize employee output via a personal approach. You can accomplish that by talking to your staff, getting to know their opinions on their own abilities, refining their strengths, and improving on their weak points. As a result, your task of role assignment will become much easier.
In case you want to ensure employees stick to strict working schedules, simply use your scheduling software to clock employee punch-ins and punch-outs. That shouldn’t be a problem, as the software possesses the official data of your employees, including delivery personnel.
7. Don’t Keep your Employees in the Dark
Your employees should know the details regarding what they are paid, how, and why. That’s why businesses have started mailing Full Benefits Reports that break down the salary structures, rewards and bonuses, taxes and compliance expenses, and several benefits. In turn, you can let them in on an open secret: employee costs are almost always higher than their remunerations!
Value for the Money: A Mutually Beneficial Policy
To get the most out of your employees, you can cultivate a work ethic where each member of your staff is remunerated for her/his special value with respect to your venture. Choosing to prioritise better work is a key aspect of this. As a restaurant business, you will be able to build motivation by rewarding higher effort and productivity. By incentivizing efficiency, you can boost a healthier work ethic among your employees.
8. Incentives for Productivity
A further point of contention is streamlining the rewards and employee incentives program. Make it clear to your employees that individual and departmental incentives will be based on performance and dedication. Moreover, you can lay down concrete rules for bonuses and overtime payment. In turn, your employees will be motivated to work with passion and precision to get those benefits.
These programs bring you to the most delicate issue in business: the question of misplaced over-incentivizing. When you invest too much in a single mode of production, the innovative nature of your staff gets stifled. Plus, you must be cautious on offering incentives and rewards without checking whether they are impartially given. In that case, not only will your employee face a constricted work culture, but she/he may voice grievances due to unfair/impartial treatment.
Final Remarks
While the above list is not exhaustive, it presents some good staffing strategies to save money in the restaurant industry. If you are still confused about how to improve staffing strategy, here’s another tip. You can opt for a rollback of operations and judiciously rotate your workers according to the new immediate normal and long-term goals. This way, you can save businesses as well as livelihoods! Plus, your employees will remember this goodwill gesture and repay in kind.
The pandemic has brought about numerous vital changes in the food business. One such example is the popularity of cloud kitchens due to the increased dependency customers have on such establishments. Cloud kitchens, working on a delivery-only model, receive orders, prepare the meals, and deliver them to their clients.
The seamless way these cloud kitchens have managed to become the go-to option for people is no surprise. And there is no doubt that these kitchens will continue to be the new norm even beyond the pandemic era.
Top 3 Reasons for the Popularity of Cloud Kitchens
1. Contactless Service
The lack of physical interaction with customers makes it possible for cloud kitchens to function from multiple places, eliminating the need for more than few people to gather within one confined space.
So, these kitchens reduce contact among the people working within the kitchens as well as among customers.
2. Increase in Take-outs and Home-deliveries
Keeping in mind the safety norms that cloud kitchens are following, people can easily rely on them. Instead of dining in, most people still continue to order online because of the looming threat of contracting the virus.
The increase in take-outs and deliveries point towards a rise in online kitchens as more people understand the importance of cloud kitchens and want to set up a cloud kitchen to serve customers after the pandemic.
3. Needs Less Space Compared to Dine-in Restaurants
With COVID-19 around the corner, most people are hesitant to go to a conventional restaurant. However, they still want to gorge on delicious restaurant food. In fact, 33 percent of customers say they’ve availed more takeout food now as compared to before the pandemic. So, if you’re looking at bleak sales at your conventional restaurant, you might want to switch to cloud kitchens.
They’re small in space, menu length, and staff count. With the least number of people involved, from making the dish to delivering it, the importance of cloud kitchens, during and after the pandemic, cannot be denied.
The Impact of COVID-19 on Cloud Kitchens
1. Changing Priorities
Before pandemic customer reviews and taste dictated restaurant selection, the priorities for almost every person have changed in recent months.
The standards of hygiene and sanitation have now become vital parameters to judge a restaurant. In such cases, cloud kitchens prove to be a safer choice. That’s because it comes in contact with fewer staff members while cooking and delivering and hence, enforces better hygienic standards.
2. The Inevitable Shift Towards Online Ordering
Even before the pandemic, the shift towards apps and websites was evident and inevitable. Customers loved the convenience and discounts these apps offer and so, they prefer online kitchens much more.
While the shift was gradual, the pandemic has brought out the importance of cloud kitchens, both then and now.
3. The Acceptance of Newer Cuisines
Nowadays, people prefer to have multiple cuisines and so, many multi-cuisine cloud kitchens have emerged to satisfy this need. Through cloud kitchens, families can order a variety of combos catering to the tastes of every individual.
Final Remarks
Over the months, cloud kitchens have seamlessly picked up the slack of large restaurants and become a great alternative for many restaurant owners. With COVID-19, the future of dine-in restaurants is hazy and uncertain. So, we believe, investing in a cloud kitchen is the safest bet you can make for your restaurant.
Food needs to be relished in its true essence. Unfortunately, sometimes while delivering, certain food items do not travel well. This, in turn, can hamper your brand image, and your customers might not want to order in the future. With the second lockdown, delivery services are in demand and the only resort for both restaurants and the customers. Restaurants rely on delivery services to keep the revenue flowing while customers can still enjoy their favourite cuisines at the comfort of their homes. What can go wrong are the menu items that cannot be delivered in their proper form.
Therefore, it is important that restaurants should refurbish their delivery menu.
Instead of this
Dosa with heavy filling can make it soggy. Dosa is enjoyed when crispy and hot, and its fillings are intact.
Promote this
Keep the filling light; else other South Indian dishes can be offered to your customers like Uttappam, Idli, Fried Idli, Sambhar Vada, among others.
Instead of this
Multi-layered burgers that can fall out.
Promote this
Single or two-layered burgers with less sauce so that it doesn’t fall out and remains fresh.
Instead of this
Chole Bhature is one of the nation’s favourite dishes. But oil spilling from the chole is a big turn-off for a foodie. Plus, no one likes to eat a bhatura that has gone soggy and cold.
Promote this
Chole Kulche is a better option for delivery, and chole made with kulchas are non-oily. Also, kulchas can keep soft if delivered within 30 mins.
Instead of this
French fries or Chilli Potatoes. There is no better alternative for french fries but reheating cold fries is like going back to your ex.
Promote this
The beauty of potatoes is that they are versatile. You can offer your customers some healthier options like mashed potatoes or baked potatoes. Peanut masala is an equally more nutritious and good alternative side dish.
Instead of this
Veg or non-veg salad. Salad, if not delivered within an appropriate time, can spoil the leafy vegetables, spill the sauce and turn soggy.
Promote this
An easier delivery item like a sandwich or a sub. All the veg and non-veg salad ingredients can be clubbed into a delicious sandwich and a sub that can be easily delivered.
These are few food items that can be spearheaded easily across the town, can be reheated, but above all can be enjoyed at the comfort of one’s home. Though, packaging plays a significant role in how food can be delivered in its best form. Packaging has also evolved through the years and there are many eco-friendly options available in the market. Make the best choice with the kind of food items and how you want to deliver them so that your customers keep on ordering again.
State Governments all over the country are taking bold but necessary measures to slow down the spreading of the coronavirus. One of those actions is to close down the dine-in service of restaurants (or to discourage people from visiting food businesses).
Many restaurateurs are not letting this dampen their spirit and are making the best out of the situation by turning their businesses into delivery-only operations.
Due to the nationwide lockdown followed by the various unlock phases, many foodservice businesses already have a well-thought-out delivery and takeout channel in place.
If that’s not you, then you probably have a lot of queries.
Here is a compiled checklist on how to switch a dine-in restaurant into a delivery business.
1. Create Order Channel
On a typical day, a customer would walk into your restaurant with the intent of dining. But your customer is no longer out and about right now. Instead, they are spending most of their time online.
The most important way of establishing your online presence, business, and increasing orders is getting your own ordering platform, a website. This ordering platform, made possible by inresto for many of its partners, lets their customers navigate through the menu and place direct orders.
Many restaurants partner with 3rd party aggregators for doorstep delivery, but that also means lesser profit margins. Should you decide to organize the deliveries yourself, then consider tasking your existing staff who is no longer waiting tables to deliver the orders.
You have to be where your customers are. If they were at a marketplace, you would hand out flyers. But now, your customers are on social media. So your flyer becomes posts, stories, polls, videos on social media. With a very high engagement rate, these platforms guarantee traffic to your website that can easily translate into business.
What can you share? Breathtaking shots of your menu items, Any special offers lie BOGO to get them to act on their cravings and give in to the temptation of good food.
While that is communicating with the mass, a more personal and customized approach is through SMS. You can reuse your existing database of customers and launch various campaigns made possible by inresto Campaigns. This will help you reconnect with your loyal customers and retain them.
3. Curate your menu
Making your in-dining menu available for delivery is a recipe for disaster. And you know that. Not every food item is travel-friendly, even with the most sturdy packaging material. So, create a customized delivery/ takeaway menu that has selected best-selling items from your original menu and some exciting new dishes.
Additionally, these item’s prep & cooking time should be under 30 mins. You can also select recipes that you can prep in bulk and cook over the day as and when orders pour in. This way you can take more orders and make quick deliveries.
The final touchpoint is the cost factor. Since your customers are ordering from home and do not experience your in-dining hospitality, they would expect to pay a tad bit less. Therefore, to encourage more incoming orders, optimize each meal’s ingredients and portion size to keep the price low.
The first experience of opening a food package should never be a cold mess. It ruins the experience even before anyone takes their first bite. In order to avoid such unsavory situations, proper and separate packaging of items is necessary.
One can choose from a variety of options below –
Styrofoam – good insulator; it helps to control the temperature of food. Though environmentally not friendly, this can help your orders travel well.
Plastics containers – A much cheaper option, this comes in varied sizes and shapes. These are perfect for protecting your meals, but their position on the eco-friendly scale also is far below zero.
Cardboard – A more biodegradable option, this is cost-effective and sturdy. However, if your food travels long distances, then it might make it soggy due to moisture.
Sustainable packaging – A tad bit costly affair but proves better for the environment. This also helps build a better brand image and gives your food an instant premium look.
So, now that all the key points are covered, what’s stopping you from transitioning into a delivery model? The ingredients for disruption are all here.
While we are at our homes reminiscing about the good old times of Dining Out, food ordering has started to become a guilty pleasure around this time, and we can’t seem to get over it.
When it comes to luxury dining, home delivery and takeaway were alien concepts until 2019. But when the lockdown hit us, Pullman & Novotel New Delhi Aerocity, like many luxury dining hotels, happily explored the food delivery space.
For this, they required an online ordering platform that did justice to their menu offerings, combos, and a wide variety of cuisines. This was made possible with inresto.
#UnboxDeliciousness by Pullman & Novotel New Delhi Aerocity
UnboxDeliciousness is the home delivery/takeaway offering by Pullman & Novotel New Delhi Aerocity delivering within 40 km from Aerocity, Delhi. It helps diners to recreate the luxury dining experience of Pullman at home.
What is there to Unbox? | Offerings
Deliciousness!! Of course but for them, deliciousness has a widespread meaning.
There is something for everyone to suit their different moods.
For the days when you feel motivated to hog on healthy food options that will help boost your immunity and for the ones when you want to indulge in your favourite comfort food.
They have carefully curated a mix of all their bestsellers and celebrated dishes from each of their restaurants –
1.Indian street food from Café Pluck,
2. Pan Asian cuisine from the award-winning restaurant Honk,
3. Regional Indian cuisine from Food Exchange
4. Mediterranean cuisine from Farmers’ Basket at Pluck.
If this wasn’t enough, they are also offering Honk Dimsum Lunch at Home and Flying Weekend Brunch from Farmer’s Basket at Pluck on popular demand.
One could also occasionally find seasonal & festive cuisine menus like this Ramadan, they delivered a thoughtfully curated Iftar meal to their diner’s home.
If this excites you as much as it excites us, then visit here and Order Now!
Psst… you don’t want to miss out the Chef’s recommendations:
Fish & Chips, Free Range Chicken Burger, City Pizza, Immune booster Salad, our range of Dim sums, and our combo meals.
Safety and Hygiene
The entire delivery menu consists of fresh and authentic products from their in-house kitchen garden.
There is no doubt that food is prepared keeping in mind all the hygiene protocols laid down by the ministry of health and WHO. In addition, contactless delivery and contactless payment methods are in place to ensure safety during the delivery process.
By providing a safe and convenient food delivery service via inresto’s online order, Pullman is able to stay connected with their diners. There is an avenue for the diners to get their favourite food delivered at any time.
Having their online ordering system provides hotels & restaurants like these with more benefits than one. Here’s a closer look:
1. No Aggregator Commission
The dependency on third-party aggregators for food delivery cost restaurants hefty commissions. This leads to a drastic reduction in restaurant profit margins. That’s where having your own online ordering system comes to the rescue.
2. Dynamic menu
The diners, while placing the order, must have a great user experience. That is why a digital menu that offers convenience and is intuitive is necessary.
inresto’s Digital Menu allows restaurants to create a dynamic menu where they can add or eliminate new items, discounts & offers any time they like.
3. Boost Loyalty and Retention
Restaurants can save all the diner data received during the ordering process. This data can later be used to create personalised loyalty programs and communicate the same with them via SMS and emails. This, in turn, helps them generate more audience and consistent revenue at no extra cost—a win-win for all.
Contactless payment solutions were popular even before the global outbreak of COVID-19. Millennials, in particular, love the idea of contactless payment solutions as they’re more tech-savvy than the older generations. However, during the pandemic, the older generations also realized the importance of contactless payment in restaurants.
The pandemic has drastically altered the way we interact with people. Using cash transactions significantly increases the transmission risk among people. As a result, people have started to prefer contactless payment modes instead.
Let’s discuss how contactless payment benefit your restaurant:
Commitment to Safety
Restaurants, just like many other businesses, have been closed for quite a while now. After months of lockdown, diners are apprehensive about eating out again. All this while, they have been ordering food and managing their work from home.
However, they do miss the overall dining out experience. Organizing a get together while following the social distancing protocols is what people are willing to try as they continue to cope with the pandemic.
The New Normal
Though most people would like to return to their favorite restaurants, the circumstances have been in their favour. As coronavirus outbreak continues to raise concerns of safety.
During these times ensuring diner safety by implementing every necessary precaution is key. Your responsibility is to gain their trust and make them feel safe while they are enjoying their favorite dish from your restaurant. Incorporating contactless payment in restaurants is an indispensable part of that strategy.
How would people know what steps you have taken to minimize the spread of COVID-19? You’ll have to promote your safety measures through emails and SMS campaigns, and via social media. Yes, it would incur a minute cost but it is necessary to get your business up and running again.
Let your diners know that they no longer need to use receipts, pens, pin pads, and terminals at your restaurant. Processing payments using a mobile wallet is the new normal in your restaurant now. With inresto, you can build an online ordering platform, a website, and enable ‘order now’ widget on Instagram for direct order that lets you communicate and stay connected with your diners. You can also leverage the inresto’s CRM software to send personalized SMS and emails to diners.
The COVID-19 outbreak has dented the global economy. However, things are gearing towards relative normalcy and the restaurant industry is finding new ways to bounce back. Contactless payments in restaurants are critical in today’s climate as they help you attain a competitive edge. So, we advise you to use contactless payments to recover your losses and boost your business.
Almost everyone owns a smartphone today, and so, contactless payment in restaurants is not an inconvenience for people. In fact, it’s quite the opposite! People don’t like to carry cash with them. So, you can consider this time as an opportunity to level-up your game and make digital contactless payments mandatory at your eatery.
How Would Tipping Work?
While adopting contactless payment, you might be confused about how you can still accept tips from your customers. Especially for a full-service restaurant, it can seem quite overwhelming if your staff is not trained in the subject. What if we tell you that there is a safe and straightforward way of adding tips to your staff’s income?
Here’s how you can do it safely:
Place the payment terminal near the guest after sanitizing it to ensure minimal contact
Guest can add the tip to the total amount generated by the POS system
Guest taps his/her card
Sanitize the terminal once the payment is processed
Not that difficult right? Moreover, except for the terminal which is sanitized before and after use, diners are only touching their cards and nothing else.
Speed up Transactions
Contactless payment in restaurants allows you to make faster transactions by avoiding front-of-house pile-ups. If you’re anticipating a high volume of diners, the importance of contactless payment in restaurants grows by ten folds. With contactless payments, you’ll be able to serve more customers, increase your revenue, and move counter lines faster.
For instance, it takes just 0.5 seconds to process payments with contactless credit cards of Visa. This process is much faster with payment wallets like Dineout Pay than cards that require entering a pin or using a chip card or payment wallets.
Make Secure Payments
With contactless payments, diners never have to sign a receipt, enter a pin, or hand over their credit card. This makes contactless transactions more secure compared to their conventional counterparts. Also, no-contact options are equipped with cryptographic and sophisticated technology which adds an extra layer of security.
This way your diners can rest assured that their payments are encrypted without any unintentional charges as card readers can scan at a maximum distance of two inches only.
One Step Closer Towards Sustainable Transactions
Sustainability will play an important role in determining the competitive edge of a business in the future. Be the frontrunner and adopt sustainable technology to contribute to your future today! Think about the amount of paper you’ll save by not having to print receipts or use banknotes.
Research suggests that it takes three million trees to produce paper receipts per year in the United States alone. Receipt production also results in the emission of 4 billion pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. By implementing cashless, contactless payment methods, you can contribute substantially towards the betterment of the planet.
Final Remarks
As a restaurant owner, it’s essential to gain the trust of diners and promote your safety regulations during these trying times. This way, your restaurant will thrive even after the pandemic ends. That’s because cash transactions will continue to decline in the post-COVID-19 world.
Besides, contactless payments are crucial for the sustainability aspects of your business.
With COVID-19 cases in India being at a surge, many industries have been a victim to low revenues. The restaurant industry is one such that has retaken a huge hit. But don’t we always find ways to keep going and doing what we love the most? We have this time too! The entire restaurant industry stands strong at this point and is there to support each other.
It has constantly been making strategic changes for growth during the trying times. With the lockdown in 2020 followed by the unlock phase, many restaurants willingly explored takeaway & home delivery options. Their only challenge being the hefty aggregator commissions that come with the aggregator-based home delivery model.
Solution?
A restaurant owning its own delivery model! With this, you can get direct orders and continue the employment of staff who can pitch in as delivery agents.
Restaurant technology solutions like inresto enable restaurants across the country with online ordering platforms and reduce third-party aggregator dependency. inresto has empowered and armed over 3000+ restaurants so far and continues to grow the number.
How does the online ordering platform let you ace the food delivery game?
1. Own website & ‘Order now’ widget on social media
Having your own website and social media presence can help restaurants save big and get online orders organically. The fact that it’s your own space, you don’t have to depend on aggregator apps like ZOMATO & Swiggy to give you orders; hence you save on the commission money.
A menu is the reflection of a restaurant. The cuisine, language of the chefs, vibe, and service intent is reflected via your food menu.
Living in an online world, a digital menu that offers convenience and is intuitive at the same time. This is all that your restaurant needs to complete your food delivery business setup online.
A delivery-only menu can be crafted with ease that takes less time to prep and travels well.
inresto DineIn – a digital menu solution for restaurants makes this an easy job for many restaurants. The solution offers the liberty for restaurants to modify the menu anytime they want. Apart from this, it helps them keep track of the customer data, which later is used for running customer retention campaigns and loyalty programs.
3. Run campaigns (SMS & Email)
Communication is the key. A restaurant must have an online presence through a website and social media handles. You could be famous for what you do, but keeping in touch with your old customers and reaching new customers is key for a successful restaurant business.
Email and SMSs are one way to keep the audience engaged with your restaurant. You can bring them to your website and social media handles, time and again. These could include information regarding your delivery services, special offers, and combos that nudge the customer to make a purchase. inresto campaign is one such technology solution that makes this happen in one click.
4. Cost-effective marketing solutions
With every other brand making the most of the digital world, getting lost in the crowd is easy and you don’t want to.
Posting the right content is important along with effective marketing solutions like running social media ads on FB & Instagram and increasing your SEO score to rank higher on the web to stand out.
inresto by dineout offers all that and more such solutions like social media marketing, photoshoot of menu items, listing banners on Dineout app, etc. to give you an edge over the competition.
Even when distance is necessary we stay connected via the digital world. Good food and support for each other keeps us together and going. Let’s make the best use of the good things we have and hold on to them until we pass this phase.
We’re living in a dynamic world where things change in the blink of an eye. Slowly technology is becoming an integral part of major industries. Also, many technological changes are carrying forward inventions and trends that are more popular than the previous activities.
One such change that is exciting restaurateurs around the world is the emergence of cloud kitchens. It has changed the dynamics of the food industry and is coming out to be an amazing option in the food market. In this guide, we will cover details about the cloud kitchen and why running a cloud kitchen is better than running a restaurant for some.
What is a Cloud Kitchen?
Cloud kitchen is a central food outlet service that may or may not have a dining area and delivers food as per the orders placed by customers online. It is becoming trendy as people nowadays love to order food online at their doorsteps without stepping out. Here, at a cloud kitchen, tasty food is prepared in a traditional way with utmost hygiene and caution. Customers can easily browse menus from different categories and receive the delivery within the specified time. This effective and quick service pushes customers to come back to the restaurant from time to time.
The concept of a cloud kitchen is very common among people who work during busy office hours, hostel students, paying guests, and those who want to eat at the comfort of their homes without going out. Apart from these segments, it has also simplified the process of transaction that provides ample options for paying like Cash On Delivery, UPI, Bank Transaction, Debit Card, Credit Card, and many more.
Why Running a Cloud Kitchen is Better than Running a Restaurant
Running a cloud kitchen is better than running a full-fledged restaurant or a hotel as it’s cost-effective and easy to maintain. Read on to know a few reasons why running a cloud kitchen is better than running a restaurant.
1. Saves Costs
When it comes to cost-saving and yearly expenditure, cloud kitchen is a clear winner compared to running and maintaining a restaurant. You can reduce costs on various aspects like buying the restaurant space or investing in large premises, maintaining the ambience, power and electricity, dining table and other furniture, waiters and catering staff, expensive cutlery and many more.
Also, you’ll have limited costs of things like kitchen utensils, food preparation staff, cooking ingredients, delivery boys, and other maintenance bills like electricity, gas, and water. So, this is how a cloud kitchen saves more costs as compared to a traditional dine-in restaurant and makes a better option among the two.
2. Eases Expansion
Starting a full-fledged cloud kitchen is not a difficult task as compared to a restaurant. Once you have set up your cloud kitchen, it is very easy to expand your market. You can have a tie-up with different hostels and deliver your food there.
Apart from these expansion opportunities, one can also start delivering at new locations as well as at other cities by opening multiple branches. These opportunities give the cloud kitchen an extra advantage over a restaurant because expanding the brand of your restaurant will cost you a lot.
3. Lowers Overhead Expenditure
A typical diner looks out for many aspects before selecting a restaurant like the food quality, ambience of the restaurant, type of service, and much more. So, dine-in restaurants and hotels spend a large amount of money on overhead costs such as power and lighting, restaurant decoration, theme management, keeping extra staff for emergency conditions, getting additional space for parking of vehicles, and many more. A cloud kitchen on the other hand saves all these overhead costs and keeps them at a minimum that helps you to maximize your profits.
4. Boosts Efficiency
The efficiency of cloud kitchens is more compared to the dine-in restaurants due to various reasons. In traditional dine-in restaurants, eating can become very tedious during busy hours especially on weekends. They may even lose customers due to the rush at the peak hours as they need to wait for a longer time. In a cloud kitchen, the efficiency is much higher as the only focus is on preparing the food and delivering it in time making it more quick, effective, and a better option for the customers to choose during peak hours and on weekends.
5. Competitive Menu Pricing
Cloud kitchens can save a lot of costs and expenditure as compared to restaurants. They can use these savings to invest in their pricing of different cuisines and food items to reduce the competition and earn more by serving food at a comparatively lower price than the price prevailing in the market. Many cloud kitchens at present have started to reduce their prices and offer festive and weekend discounts due to which they are the ultimate winners in the market that catches the eyes of many customers.
Cloud kitchen is a technological invention that has truly revolutionized the food industry. Currently, it’s the new normal and has a broad reach due to any future threat of a pandemic.
Since a cloud kitchen is super easy to maintain, it operates at reduced costs and is easy to scale, and is an ultimate choice for the owners. At the same time, the food is delivered on time at comparatively lower prices making it a convenient option for customers & restaurants. Hence, running a cloud kitchen is much better and easier when compared to a restaurant.
To maintain and run your cloud kitchen properly, you absolutely need efficient restaurant management systems like inresto to put you ahead of the curve. inresto also offers products like ‘inresto Online Order’ to boost the reach of your online presence. The SCM feature that simplifies the inventory process or POS, which boosts the food selection and dining experience, are other exciting products. So, invest in inresto and ensure your cloud kitchen runs smoothly today!
