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Online food delivery has witnessed a substantial increase in recent years, writes Zainab Mansoor
Considerable growth in food delivery platforms, the Covid-19 pandemic and the explosion of digital technologies have triggered substantial shi ts in consumer behaviour, bringing to the fore the rising trend of o -premise dining.
These trends are forcing traditional restaurants to rethink their strategies and digitise their services for the new virtual customer. They are also prompting the growth of several virtual restaurants that are keen to cater to the ‘remote’ inbound end-user, by leveraging digital applications and third-party services.
“Consumer behaviour has changed drastically and has accelerated growth in online food delivery as many restaurants have shi ted their businesses from dine-in and take away to delivery,” CEO and co-founder of KLC Virtual Restaurants, Mubarak Ja ar tells Gulf Business.
“This competitive landscape has led us to focus more on developing niche or underrepresented cuisines while also maintaining our position in popular cuisines as demand for dishes that were traditionally not popular have grown signifi cantly,” he adds.
Kuwait-based KLC Virtual Restaurants operates more than 40 virtual restaurants which have been developed in-house across a variety of di erent cuisines from 15 cloud kitchens in the country.
OVERALL ECOSYSTEM Kuwait’s F&B landscape has transformed signifi cantly in recent years. According to a KPMG report, Kuwait recorded the highest spend on delivery in the region in 2019. Furthermore, while the average UAE consumer ordered fi ve delivery meals a month in 2019, Kuwait came close at just under fi ve meals per month.
“Online food delivery has grown signifi cantly during the last several years – specifi cally across the GCC. Covid-19 has accelerated the rise of virtual restaurants as many traditional established food players see this as a solution to utilise their infrastructure in the current landscape along with the rise in cloud kitchens,” says Ja ar.
The company’s cloud kitchen business model in Kuwait is vertically integrated, which means that it manages all functions in-house, from the creation and development of a virtual brand to kitchen operations and fi nally delivery of food to the customer.
“We are expanding our reach in Kuwait and plan to launch several cloud kitchens during the course of the year that will house our new virtual brands focused on niche cuisines. We are continuously researching online food delivery trends across the world and will continue developing and upgrading our menus, recipes and introducing new dishes across all territories,” he adds.
The company has a strategic partnership with cloud kitchen platform Kitopi and has launched more than 20 of its brands in the UAE with plans to launch all of its current and new brands later this year.
“We have also recently opened our third cloud kitchen in Dubai Motor City and are planning on opening several more kitchens and hopefully cover the majority of areas across the UAE by end of the year,” notes Ja ar.
