Swiggy, the renowned online food ordering and delivery platform, has been serving customers across the country by connecting restaurants with customers from the comfort of their homes. But the company had a novel idea to help both consumers and restaurant partners and it has paid off well, in turn benefiting Swiggy.
Swiggy's novel idea
Swiggy had the idea of giving restaurants a bigger exposure through its Access Kitchens, which are cloud kitchens helping restaurant partners expand their presence across the country. In the last two years, Swiggy's cloud kitchen initiative turned into a successful business model, not only helping restaurant partners and consumers but also in creating jobs.
According to Swiggy, more than 8,000 direct and indirect jobs were created through cloud initiatives in the last two years. The food-delivery platform also achieved a major milestone by setting up over 1,000 cloud kitchens for its restaurant partners, attracting an investment of over Rs 250 crores, including an additional 75 crores investment to bring cloud kitchens to 12 new cities by March 2020.
Ever since the initiative of the cloud kitchen started, Swiggy has invested in over a million square feet of real estate across 14 cities. Swiggy's Access Kitchens provide everything from property to utilities for restaurant partners, who'll simply have to send their chefs. Swiggy also provides data points, which help restaurant owners gauge the demand for dishes and avoid wastage.
"Swiggy has always maintained that cloud kitchens will be the future of food delivery. Very soon, India will have the second-highest number of cloud kitchens in the world, only next to China. The milestone of Swiggy successfully creating over 1000 partner kitchens shows the faith the restaurant partners have in the concept and bolsters our pioneering efforts in enabling more success stories in the restaurant ecosystem," Vishal Bhatia, CEO, New Supply, Swiggy, said in a statement.
How an idea turned into success
In just two years, Swiggy has provided positive results for restaurant partners in helping them reach new cities without having to bear any major investment costs. The success of the cloud kitchen initiative can be assessed by the fact that one in three Swiggy Access partners expand to a second kitchen within 90 days of joining the initiative.
From bringing Buhari and Kumarakom from Chennai to Coimbatore, Biryani Blues from Delhi to Chandigarh, Fireflies from Coimbatore to Hyderabad, Vizag and Pune and more, Swiggy Access Kitchens has brought quality restaurants from across India to tier-2 cities.
"Swiggy Access has helped us expand easily by eliminating obstacles like rent, logistics, customer acquisition and market fit. In the 10 years that our restaurants have been in operation, it is only now that expansion seemed viable. We are reaching a new set of customers and currently service over 1,500 orders every day through our kitchens on Swiggy Access alone. We believe it is a big boost to the restaurant industry." Mansoor Ali, Director of Meghana Foods, an iconic biryani restaurant in Bangalore, said.
Swiggy is also aiming at bringing 7,000 more jobs in the restaurant industry in the next six months.
