Swiggy on Wednesday announced that it has reached the milestone of creating over 1,000 cloud kitchens for its restaurant partners through its Swiggy Access initiative. In a span of just two years, Swiggy has invested in over a million square feet of real estate space across 14 cities to help large, medium and small restaurant partners expand to more locations both within their city and across new cities through cloud kitchens. By creating over 1,000 partner cloud kitchens, Swiggy says it has become the largest enabler of this model for restaurants not just in India but potentially across the world.
This announcement comes a few days after Swiggy CEO, Sriharsha Majety spoke about the company making significant investments in “pods” to solve for the supply gaps in the country. Pods house the cloud kitchens of restaurant partners on Swiggy Access. Majety also spoke about how Swiggy will scale up these pods to be within a 10-minute reach of 99% of its consumers.
Swiggy Access- Creating a win-win proposition for restaurants and consumers
As a company, Swiggy believes it needs to bring the best quality food experiences closer to its consumers. Swiggy pioneered the cloud kitchen model with Swiggy Access two years ago, enabling expansion for more than 250 unique quality restaurant partners who have delighted consumers in new areas. Swiggy collaborates with restaurant partners in real estate, data science, and operational efficiency. Through this expansion model, the restaurants get to expand into new geographies, whereas consumers get to experience great brands in their neighbourhood.
“With the massive growth in online food ordering over the last 2-3 years, India has leapfrogged the widespread in-restaurant dining culture that was prevalent in many international markets. Swiggy has always maintained that cloud kitchens will be the future of food delivery. Very soon, India will have the second-highest number of cloud kitchens in the world, only next to China. The milestone of Swiggy successfully creating over 1000 partner kitchens shows the faith the restaurant partners have in the concept and bolsters our pioneering efforts in enabling more success stories in the restaurant ecosystem,” said Vishal Bhatia, CEO, New Supply, Swiggy.
“Swiggy Access has helped grow restaurant businesses, deliver unmatched customer experience and created employment opportunities in metros as well as tier 2 and 3 cities. Over the last two years, Swiggy has invested over 175 crore towards setting up and running these kitchens. This success has encouraged us to invest an additional 75 crore to bring more partner cloud kitchens in 12 new cities by March 2020,” he added.
Bringing quality restaurants to smaller towns
Swiggy Access has one of the best-in-industry partner retention rates. On average, one in three partners on Swiggy Access expands to a second kitchen within 90 days of getting on the Access cloud kitchen model. In tier-2 cities where consumers often have limited access to quality or a greater variety of food options, Swiggy Access is bringing in quality restaurants from across India. This includes restaurants like Buhari and Kumarakom from Chennai to Coimbatore, Biryani Blues from Delhi to Chandigarh, and NIC Natural Ice Cream which has expanded from Pune to Chandigarh and Jaipur. Similarly, many restaurants from tier-2 cities have also expanded into tier-1 cities, giving them wider reach and brand recall. For instance, Fireflies from Coimbatore is now available in Chennai with plans to continue expanding to Hyderabad, Vizag and Pune. Marky Momos from Jaipur has been well received in Delhi, and Baba Chicken from Ludhiana has won customers’ hearts in Chandigarh.
“Swiggy Access has helped us expand easily by eliminating obstacles like rent, logistics, customer acquisition and market fit. In the 10 years that our restaurants have been in operation, it is only now that expansion seemed viable. We are reaching a new set of customers and currently service over 1,500 orders every day through our kitchens on Swiggy Access alone. We believe it is a big boost to the restaurant industry.” said Mansoor Ali, Director - Meghana Foods, an iconic biryani restaurant in Bengaluru.
Enabling employment in the restaurant industry
Till date, Swiggy’s cloud kitchen operations across partner restaurants and its own brands have generated more than 8,000 direct and indirect jobs in the restaurant industry while reducing overheads. This includes culinary jobs like chef and kitchen staff, as well as non-culinary jobs like facilities and maintenance staff. By achieving this milestone of setting up 1000 partner cloud kitchens, Swiggy is set to add another 7000 direct and indirect jobs in the restaurant industry in the next six months.