OYO and food! Who would've thought? What does it mean? How is it relevant? These questions are popping like popcorn in my head. I wanted some clarity so, I went ahead and did some homework for you.
We all know of OYO being a hotel aggregator, providing budget hotels across India. But, when they take a deep interest in the food tech industry, will cloud kitchens become an answer to sustain in the market?
So, what is this all about?
When the rumours were rife that, "OYO acquires Fresh Menu", OYO ventured into F&B category with biryani and made it clear that expansion was a natural progression.
They addressed the huge elephant in the room and denied all speculations, saying,
“This is baseless speculation and we have clarified the same. As the largest hotel chain in India, operating franchised and lease assets, we do have an active play in the F&B business, with an average of about 25% of our revenue coming through the kitchens we operate in some of our hotels. Hence culinary design and good food experience are valuable to us. We have nothing further to announce at the moment.”
Setting up a cloud kitchen (a shared kitchen used by several restaurants exclusively for delivery purpose) is something every company is thriving to achieve, in order to make the best use of infrastructure and food demand in the market. This may be a pilot run for OYO to make the utmost use of existing staff and kitchen that are operated by them.
They're also looking at distributors like Zomato to take care of their delivery.
Why are we excited?
So all-in-all, if you're a biryani lover, you have yet another option to choose from with OYO's two outlets in Mumbai, 11 in Delhi and 9 in Bangalore!