KaaS (Kitchen-as-a-Service), a boon for the high-risk restaurant market
After SaaS, it’s KaaS for the restaurant industry — where Less is More!
Low Risk, Low Investment, and High Returns!
The advent of revolutionary technologies had made the concept of Kitchen as a Service (KaaS) a reality today. With increased access to rentable commercial kitchen spaces and higher availability of technology stack, Kitchen as a Service (KaaS) is turning out a no-brainer to implement. Companies such as Cloud Kitchens, Food Starts, Kitsch Kitchen are already on the path to revolutionize the restaurant industry with their KaaS-based offerings.
Decoding Restaurant as a Service (KaaS):
As the name suggests, KaaS providers provide a well-equipped, ready-to-use kitchen to anyone who wants to either bootstrap their new culinary venture or want to expand to new locations without adding physical stores. These brands or businesses can either accept orders from their native website/app and/or third-party aggregators like GrubHub, UberEats, etc.
Since delivery and takeout models have emerged as the only winners in the COVID-struck world, restaurants, old and new, have started embracing such solutions to keep the financial wheel turning without worrying about the complexities of a front-of-house operation.
Similar to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), where cloud companies rent out their infrastructure, KaaS includes providing space and tools to restaurants to run a business without committing a significant capital expenditure. A typical KaaS infrastructure can be a large warehouse having multiple restaurants under the same roof, allowing restaurants to increase their margins and move upstream
How KaaS enable businesses to tackle challenges and grow?
The delivery-only virtual kitchens are much simpler to operate. As mentioned earlier, a KaaS-based kitchen requires lower start-up costs and doesn’t take a toll on capital expenditure. Restaurant partners are in a constant need to expand their operations, but often have to encounter exorbitant rental costs. A ready-made kitchen and a robust online ordering system make a winning combination for everyone.
Let’s move ahead and understand the benefits of migration to the Restaurant as a Service.
Pay as you go
Just have a burger business? List out the kitchen equipment and tools you’d need to prepare and pack your orders and pay only for them. Want to use them for only 15 days a month? KaaS platforms would give you the flexibility to do that too.
That being said, brands can save huge on utilities as well as manpower. This also gives them the flexibility to focus on other important things like customer retention and food quality.
Quick Turnaround
KaaS allows restaurants to reduce the turnaround time of orders significantly with fewer mistakes on orders. One can leverage distributed cooking throughout the city and have kitchens at multiple high-foot-traffic locations. This not only ensures a wider reach but also helps maintain the highest quality standards. In short, your food will reach hot and fresh to your customers, and never soggy.
Based on the location and time metrics, the closest virtual base kitchen can take up the order and convert a customer into a loyal consumer for a lifetime.
Rapid Geo-expansion
KaaS kitchens offer out of the box agility when it comes to expanding in other geographies. From front-house operations to warehousing and delivery logistics, expanding wit the KaaS model ensures quick growth with profitability. In fact, the cost and time required for launching a new restaurant drops significantly, often by a factor of 50% or more
When KaaS meets SaaS
Once you’ve set up the kitchen, which pretty much would be done by the service provider, the next step is to launch your own website and/or a mobile app that your customers can use to order from your business. Direct ordering will help you keep 100% of the revenue from each sale, which is really important if you want to make the business profitable, especially during the COVID times.
A robust, feature-rich online ordering system would provide a fully integrated website allowing your customers the convenience and safety that they are looking for.
As COVID-19 has influenced the online ordering demand, it has also given rise to new technological solutions such as contactless ordering for pickup and delivery. Restaurants that are looking to capitalize on the $800 billion a year restaurant industry with less red-tape are exploring the SaaS products as a way to diversify their off-premises offerings.
Direct online ordering systems, like Restolabs, allow customers to place orders for takeout, delivery as well as curbside through the restaurant’s native website/app. It’s a comprehensive system designed to help restaurants maximize profits without getting into the rut of hefty commissions charged by third-party aggregators.
Direct online ordering systems also provide insightful data on products and customers that restaurants can use to create effective marketing strategies, build annual budgets, make financial decisions, as well as reduce food waste.
Take advantage of the delivery boom now!
This is an incredibly challenging, yet exciting time for entrepreneurs in the food sector. KaaS business models can change the very fabric of what and how the world eats in the world post-COVID.
With the right combination of technologies, restaurants can run the whole operation with higher flexibility, better margins, and lower payback period, without missing a beat!
