We are targeting office-centric areas- Twigly
We are targeting office-centric areas- Twigly

Twigly was started to bring tasty, affordable, freshly prepared food from across the world for the people in India. It took them three months to work on the taste, preparation process, sourcing and delivery systems which they have established. While they appear just like any other food delivery start-up on the outside, Twigly has done a lot of behind the scenes to ensure each customer enjoys every bite of what they eat.

How is the response so far?

The response has been phenomenal. We have a very healthy repeated rate and that gives us the confidence that we’re on to right track. We’re constantly in touch with our customers, almost in every meal served and we’re energized and humble by nature is what people say about us. We’re currently rated 4.6 - Legendary - on Zomato, the highest rating in Gurgaon and share it with stalwarts that are known for their good food.

You have raised $200,000 funding from angel investors. Where do you plan to use them?

Twigly is just at the beginning of its journey. We will use the funding to expand coverage across Gurgaon and then Delhi. In addition to this we plan to source great recipes from renowned chefs and execute them in our or our partner’s kitchen.

How do you manage to change your menu daily?

We change the menu everyday to ensure freshness, minimize inventory and wastage and give all our dishes a chance to be tried by customers. We should also mention that the entire menu does not change every day. We keep adding new dishes that we create and retiring dishes that are not well received. It’s not an easy task, as a changing menu leads lot wastage but we’re becoming much better at predicting demand and will soon be able to reduce wastage below industry standard levels.

As you have professional chefs at your board. What is the revenue sharing model between you two?

Yes, all our food is prepared by professional chefs. We believe good quality cannot be achieved by semi-professional chefs. To scale, we will use the spare capacities of professional kitchens to make our food and not crowd source it. We do not have revenue sharing arrangements with any of our sources.

How do you do the pricing?

We benchmark ourselves against other options available, specifically dine-in restaurants and temper that with our belief on what we would pay for such quality food, if we didn’t know the brand.

How does Twigly provide nutritive food, prepared with fresh and quality ingredients in a delivery format?

Making nutritive food fresh is not something new. Traditional brick-and-mortar restaurants have been doing it for quite some time. However, they treat delivery customers as secondary customers. If delivery customers are your primary customers, you need to think differently. For example, during our early trials we found that our pasta would be over-cooked and dry after 45 minutes - this was because the pasta was still cooking when sealed. We figured out that we need to use more gravy and seal the pasta undercooked, so that it is perfect by the time it hits the customers’ table. Similarly, we learnt numerous other tricks for the dishes in our menu.

What is your expansion plans?

We plan to cover Gurgaon over the next couple of months, before entering Delhi. We are targeting office-centric areas as we believe there are very few options for office goers to get a good lunch. In our past lives, we ended up eating unhealthy food from neighbourhood dhabas because of the convenience and affordability. The only other alternative was traditional fast food that, apart from being unhealthy, is boring. This provides us to be better in utilization as compared to traditional restaurants which are almost empty during lunch or dinner depending on their location.

What are your future plans?

Today we are at very early stage and very cognizant of the difficulties that others have faced while scaling up.  We’re putting our days and nights into ensuring that scale does not affect our quality. We’ve served ~ 50 people for an office party and the organizer specifically called up saying that she was pleasantly surprised that the quality was not compromised, which she usually saw in bulk orders. Moreover, we’re constantly sourcing and innovating new dishes from experienced chef that we can introduce into the menu. We’re adding two new dishes tomorrow that we’re very excited about.

 
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