Delhi Govt's Cloud-kitchen policy to give new heights to biz; players welcome the move

Looking at the potential that the cloud-kitchen segment holds, the Delhi government had announced a ‘Cloud Kitchen’ policy in its 2022 budget. In a step towards this, the Dialogue and Development Commission (DDC), in collaboration with the industries department, is going to hold a consultation with stakeholders on April 26 to discuss easing land and licence regulations.

“Cloud kitchens are emerging as a strong part of the restaurant industry and are growing at a rate of more than 20 per cent every year and cloud kitchens provide direct and indirect employment to many people,” shared Hanish Suri, COO, Wok on Fire by adding that considering the immense potential for growth and in order to maximize the potential of this industry, it is good initiative taken by the government to structure everything to ease out the overall process as planned to provide land to cloud kitchens with plug and play facilities and ease the number of licenses and regulations etc.

The DDC and the industries department will deliberate on the provision of land and other incentives to cloud kitchens, easing of licence regulations for such units, and setting up cloud kitchen clusters with plug and play features across different land parcels.

“It is the first time that a state government has recognised cloud kitchens as significant contributors to the food and beverage industry. They have a huge potential to attract investments, increase the market size of the food and beverage sector, and generate large-scale direct and indirect jobs,” pointed Jasmine Shah, Chairman, DDC.

Commenting on the Govt’s decision, Ravi Tokas, Chef Owner at Parat and Me-awww that has emerged as one of the most loved cloud-kitchen brand in NCR said, “Food delivery or cloud kitchen industry will boom in next few years till the time we are not getting the remedy of this pandemic. Now, people are more aware and health conscious while eating food from outside and they are comfortable in enjoying their food of their homes with their loved ones.” He also pointed that when the employees were unemployed in 2020, the cloud kitchens and deliveries started growing and gave them the opportunity to work due to which they had earned their daily bread and butter.

“The easing of getting permissions and licences to set up a cloud kitchen in Delhi will be very helpful for the people who wants to start a new business or enter in to this field. Again, lots of people will be employed in the activity of growing industry of dark/ delivery kitchens,” Tokas further added.

As per the Govt data, cloud kitchens are set to be a 2-billion-dollar industry in India by 2024, up from 400 million dollars in 2019. As cloud kitchens prepare and deliver food at the customer’s doorstep by taking orders via food aggregators or online platforms, they can operate from a fraction of a space that is usually needed for a restaurant.

“Govt is further facilitating the growth of this strongly emerging segment by encouraging setting up of shared commercial kitchen spaces across Delhi,” added Shah.

The official were also of the opinion that this segment got a boom during the pandemic, with many restaurants pivoting to focus on cloud kitchen setups that are based on deliveries rather than dining in. As per DDC, there are around 20,000 cloud kitchens functioning across the city which provide direct employment to around 2 lakh people and indirect employment to at least 50,000.

“The cloud kitchen space is still in its early days and works in a highly differentiated manner compared to existing traditional concepts of the food industry. Thus, particular nuances such as location, technology & facility planning should be taken into account before undertaking big investments or policy decisions and I’m hopeful that the government will take all stakeholders on board for the same. But no doubt a positive step in the right direction by the government,” concluded Mohit Dang, Co- founder and Director at Currynama by Seven Seas.