Why It's Important for Food-Tech Companies to take Product First Approach

The business of getting food delivered at home has undergone enormous change. From expanding choices and convenience to allowing customers to order from a wide array of restaurants with a single tap of their mobile phone, these players are taking a product first approach when it comes to building credibility in the business.

“We need to change the product interface by product first and brand later by making it a product first experience, shares Munaf Kapadia, Chief Eating Officer at The Bohri Kitchen who is running a cloud kitchen business since 2014. If we look at bigger picture of the retail sector, for eg: if we are ordering a jeans or t-shirt from amazon it will give us a wide option of the product and not just brand. But when we order food through an aggregator we can’t order a biryani from the The Bohri kitchen and a Pizza from Domino’s in the same funnel. “So, why not we list product first and brand second by doing multiple brand within the same cart,” adds Kapadia who believes that aggregators have lots of information about what we like to order for. If they have started asking about what is your preference the whole idea of ordering food by the customer choice becomes easy..

Commenting on the same, Piyush Chourashiya, Director – Analytics, Swiggy points, “We have a feature called ‘Swiggy Pop’ which is a product first feature wherein there is a pop button where you go and get the single serve meal which is a product first approach.” Data has seen quite a bit of uptake from consumer point of view and the biggest learning for players like Swiggy and Zomato is that it takes away the cognitive load of which restaurants customer want to order a biryani, dosa from. “It is something that allows Swiggy to provide brand equity, the credentials, and the trust worthiness of the meal as well because we are actually keeping the menu secrecy, maintaining certain quality parameters, delivery parameters which we can ensure and give credibility to,” he concludes.

Meanwhile, Ganesh Bagler a professor of IIT- Delhi who has worked a lot on computational gastronomy and artificial intelligence in food is working hard to get the customer data right about food recipes and ingredients. “I think there is a huge scope for creating what is called as a computational food framework. When we started doing this work the whole idea was to get what is so different about Indian cuisine as compared to Italian or a Mexican cuisine in terms of data. So, we compiled the data, looked at the ingredients and said it is because of the flavor molecules and then we looked at the data of the flavor molecule. Spice is the fulcrum of Indian cuisine,’ he adds by sharing that it was when they went ahead and came up with applications such as pairing ingredients and knowing what kind of ingredients go together and what kind of ingredients pair better. The idea is to come with artificial intelligence which not replaces human being but enable them.

“When we are talking about digital transformation restaurants need to have a data scientist either within or someone who can help them from outside,” says Vinodh Rajaraman, CEO, EagleOwl.

Hence, we can say that digital innovation is important for sustainable growth today. One needs to be at it, and all the time. Mobile and web technologies have transformed the way business has been done. It has touched the food industry in a similar manner making the process of ordering food simple and fast.