Bringing convenience to Dark Kitchen food services
As of 2020, according to Statista, the Online Food Delivery segment in India, has grown up to US$9,207 in revenue. And while the food ordering market is all set to grow at CAGR growth rate of 16.2%, with ordering food online having become a daily affair for millions, nearly none of these customers are aware of Dark Kitchens.
Dark Kitchens or ‘Ghost Kitchens’ is a term for delivery-only cooking units in areas where it is hard to open restaurant, through which food companies or food-delivery operators, run several food brands together. These food brands are thus found and availed through popular food delivery platforms, or through their very own food delivery apps. Dark Kitchens make it easy for food companies to thus run multiple brands from one place. While the biggest advantage of Dark Kitchens is cost-cutting on restaurant-design, furnishing, higher rent for seating space and location, salaries for staff etc. such restaurants have to cater to a wider audience and ensure a significantly larger number of orders per day. Thus, the biggest challenges that Dark Kitchens face are quality-control, consistency and quick delivery. This calls for a significant amount of standardization and pre-packaged food solutions, to ensure efficiency and productive resource management.
In this regard, Dark Kitchens benefit significantly by tying up with Convenience Foods Production companies. Forstar Instafoods is one such company that provides holistic and customizable food management support to a large range of Dark Kitchens. To meet the high-level efficiency demands of food brands working out of Dark Kitchen Models, Forstar Instafoods supplies a large number of these kitchens with a variety of high-quality semi-cooked gravies, curries, frozen snacks, and meals; ready-to-bake pizzas, ready-to-steam momos, and much more. This allows Dark Kitchens to quickly streamline and mass-produce dishes, with all the required ingredients packed, organized and ready-to-cook/bake/fry on-order. And this way, customers have their food delivered to them in record-time, with a consistency in taste and quality being maintained.
For restaurants operating out of Dark Kitchens, which are keen on standardizing and upscaling their own unique recipes/menu, Forstar Instafood provides Customized Product Development services. Working with food brands on their Proprietary Recipes (under an NDA), the company helps food brands organize, bulk produce, and package their recipes in pouches, bottles, cups, bowls, trays etc. in portion packs up to 250g and bulk packs up to 3kg.
The online food delivery business, which is ever expanding rapidly in its scale and in its demand for speed and quality. Thus, restaurants operating out of Dark Kitchens that implement Convenience Food Solutions such as Forstar Instafoods, have a certain edge. What’s more – with this fruitful collaboration allowing for the food management process to be kept in check, it allows food brands to focus more of their resources on marketing efforts, so as to grow their business to match the resulting increase in potential for production capacity.
