Virtual eateries day out
For Mira Sikand, a 75-year-old home chef, the day starts at 6:00 am, when she starts preparing her orders. These have to be packed and ready for collection in the next few hours by the delivery staff of Eatlo, an internet-first restaurant in Bengaluru.
Eatlo is one of India's 65 internet-restaurant startups that have mushroomed in under a year, mostly catering to busy urban Indians. To no one's surprise, the sector has been tempting investors. They pumped in nearly Rs 10 crore into Indian internet restaurants so far this year, already matching their total investment in all of last year in these companies, according to Traxcn, a startup analytics firm. Globally, investments into internet restaurants increased to $500 million (Rs 3,200 crore) this year so far, from $180 million ( Rs 1,152 crore) in 2014.
A host of internet-first restaurants -- SpoonJoy, Yumist, Hello Curry, BiteClub, NutriTown, Brekkie, FreshMenu, FRSH, HolaChef, and Eatlo, just to name a few -- have become household names, especially among working professionals bored of their canteens. Each of these are experimenting with various models at the back end, bringing a range of innovations to production, distribution and supply chain.
Therein lies the million-dollar question: Which internet-first restaurant model will succeed, delivering scalability, consistency, and quality food? While Yumist, FreshMenu, Hello Curry and Biryani360 operate their own kitchens, SpoonJoy, Eatlo and BiteClub work on an aggregation model. The latter two employ a network of chefs, while SpoonJoy aggregates industrial and restaurant kitchens to prepare its menu items.
"This is not a scalable model -- very few chefs will do 100 meals a day from their homes, and not many can do it from their kitchens on a daily basis," admitted Rahul Harsinka, 32, co-founder of Eatlo. "There are less efficiencies in the system -- individual chefs can't procure raw materials from wholesale markets and so costs don't work out financially." Harsinka is preparing to migrate to a central kitchen model this month as a platform for chefs, at least for complicated dishes.
Currently, many of these businesses are single-city operations or at the juncture of expanding to new cities. The level of scale an internet-first restaurant can achieve will ultimately determine if its model is successful.
Eatlo is one of India's 65 internet-restaurant startups that have mushroomed in under a year, mostly catering to busy urban Indians. To no one's surprise, the sector has been tempting investors. They pumped in nearly Rs 10 crore into Indian internet restaurants so far this year, already matching their total investment in all of last year in these companies, according to Traxcn, a startup analytics firm. Globally, investments into internet restaurants increased to $500 million (Rs 3,200 crore) this year so far, from $180 million ( Rs 1,152 crore) in 2014.
A host of internet-first restaurants -- SpoonJoy, Yumist, Hello Curry, BiteClub, NutriTown, Brekkie, FreshMenu, FRSH, HolaChef, and Eatlo, just to name a few -- have become household names, especially among working professionals bored of their canteens. Each of these are experimenting with various models at the back end, bringing a range of innovations to production, distribution and supply chain.
Therein lies the million-dollar question: Which internet-first restaurant model will succeed, delivering scalability, consistency, and quality food? While Yumist, FreshMenu, Hello Curry and Biryani360 operate their own kitchens, SpoonJoy, Eatlo and BiteClub work on an aggregation model. The latter two employ a network of chefs, while SpoonJoy aggregates industrial and restaurant kitchens to prepare its menu items.
"This is not a scalable model -- very few chefs will do 100 meals a day from their homes, and not many can do it from their kitchens on a daily basis," admitted Rahul Harsinka, 32, co-founder of Eatlo. "There are less efficiencies in the system -- individual chefs can't procure raw materials from wholesale markets and so costs don't work out financially." Harsinka is preparing to migrate to a central kitchen model this month as a platform for chefs, at least for complicated dishes.
Currently, many of these businesses are single-city operations or at the juncture of expanding to new cities. The level of scale an internet-first restaurant can achieve will ultimately determine if its model is successful.
