Swiggy to partner with 300 delivery-only kitchens for faster customer service

Leading food delivery start-up Swiggy on Wednesday said it will open kitchens in four metros and partner with 300 restaurants-turned-delivery-only-kitchens to serve customers faster and expand the food delivery market across the country.

"We will soon open our 'access' kitchens in Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Mumbai and tie up with about 300 restaurants turned into delivery-only kitchens in 10 cities to serve food faster," said the city-based app provider in a statement.

Through the initiative 'Swiggy Access', the company plans to help about 300 existing restaurants across 10 cities expand to more locations within 6-9 months through kitchens that will only deliver food and involve no heavy real estate investments.

The platform is allowing restaurants to expand across cities through the project. A popular south Indian restaurant chain from Bengaluru, Vasudev Adiga's, will now deliver to consumers in Delhi through the access kitchen.

There is a deficit in restaurant supply in the country despite the mushrooming of new restaurants, according to the company.

"Several parts of a city may not have the restaurants and cuisines that a consumer wants, which these kitchens will make accessible," a company spokesperson told IANS.

By 2020, the company aims to spread the access kitchens across 30-40 cities in the country through tie-ups with hundreds of restaurants.

"We believe that delivery-only kitchens will be the future of the restaurant industry. This initiative will enable this transition by rapidly expanding to more areas in tier-I and tier-II cities," said the company's Chief Executive of New Supply vertical Vishal Bhatia in the statement.

The project of delivery-only kitchens began in Bengaluru in November last year, wherein 35 restaurants had expanded to new neighbourhoods.

Founded in 2014, the Bengaluru-based food delivery platform claims to receive about 19 million food orders a month from across 40,000 restaurants in 27 cities that it currently serves in including, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Gurugram and Pune.

After raising $210 million in June from multiple investment firms, Swiggy has so far raised over $460.