Food aggregator Zomato plans to roll out more food stations across the country’s top cities with plans to scale up the 10-minute delivery promise serving easy to deliver foods such as patties, desserts, snacks, and tea.
On Monday the company said it is set to pilot Zomato Instant—a 10-minute food delivery service which entails setting up small hubs or “stations” that will work as mini assembly kitchens aggregating popular dishes from various brands.
Several executives Mint spoke to said Zomato plans to open over 40 such stations in Delhi-NCR in the next 90 days. The company will take the model to Bengaluru and Mumbai. It will target a radius of 1-2 kilometers to fulfil such orders.
“This is going to be done properly. They have the technology infrastructure, and delivery optimization required to do it. Categories that could go in this include juices, ice creams, bakery goods, wraps etc.,” said a person familiar with developments at the company.
The company will target densely populated urban areas to begin with. For starters, listings will include low average order value or AOV products that can be quickly prepared and delivered.
The company’s move to venture into the Instant model was driven by consumer preferences, company founder Deepinder Goyal said in a company blogpost on 21 March. Customers are increasingly demanding quicker answers to their needs. They don’t want to plan, and they don’t want to wait. In fact, sorting restaurants by fastest delivery time is one of the most used features on the Zomato app, Goyal said.
The company will pilot Zomato Instant with four stations in Gurugram starting April. It will use sophisticated dish-level demand prediction algorithms, and future-ready in-station robotics to ensure that food is sterile, fresh and hot at the time it is picked by the delivery partner, the company said in the blogpost.
Goyal said the need to pilot the model was driven by the company’s conviction that the 30-minute average delivery time by Zomato is too slow and could soon become “obsolete”.
The company said it will list bestseller items (20-30 dishes in a meal time) from various restaurant partners based on demand predictability and hyperlocal preferences under Instant. Some examples include poha, chhole chawal, momos, idli sambar, juices.
“We have partnered with restaurants who are popular among our customers for these best-selling dishes we house under Instant,” a company spokesperson said in response to queries from Mint.
Tea chain Chaayos said it is participating in the pilot and plans to post its staff in the delivery hubs or stations. “We've been in conversation with them for a month now. They have been quite nimble because something like these needs deep operational expertise and last mile logistics expertise,” said Udit Gupta, assistant vice president, Chaayos.
The chain will work through its IOT machines that can brew a tea in two minutes. “This is not pre-made tea. It is fresh every single time. Our order can be in the rider's hand in three minutes. If this pilot works out, there is no reason why they should not put a lot of time and energy behind it,” he added.
Yet others seemed sceptical as the super quick delivery promise could risk lives of delivery executives and food delivery with short deadlines could curtail the quality restaurants wish to offer.
Kabir Suri, president, National Restaurant Association of India (NRAI) said that while servicing consumers’ impulse purchases might be a good idea; it could limit offerings. “There's a time that’s required to prepare and pack an item. And then there's time taken to deliver that order. We run restaurants and we know it's impossible to make things in under 10 minutes. No one's questioning the fact that they're trying to service impulse purchases but let us be practical about what they can achieve. We also have to be concerned about (rider) safety,” Suri said.
Inderjeet Singh Banga, NRAI Gurgaon chapter head and promoter of Prankster, and Pirates of Grill restaurants said that while the Instant concept could click with consumers—the company will have to iron out issues around which foods can be prepared in three minutes which satisfy guest palates and prompt repeat orders.
New-Delhi based restauranteur Thomas Fenn flagged safety concerns that riders might face while attempting such orders. “Groceries and food delivery are wildly different,” he added.
The company could also leverage Hyperpure—its business-to-business fresh and packaged food ingredient ordering platform for restaurants—to provide specific quick-to-make foods such as frozen foods to restaurants, said the person familiar with Zomato’s plans. “We are uniquely positioned to empower the whole food ecosystem with a combination of our offerings, so why not,” the company spokesperson said when asked if Zomato will leverage Hyperpure.
