Cloud Kitchen among PH firms in Forbes Asia's 100 to watch list this year

CNN Philippines

A local cloud kitchen made it to Forbes Asia's 100 to watch list in 2023.   Kraver's Canteen Co Founder Victor Lim joins us tonight.    Visit our website for more #NewsYouCanTrust: https://www.cnnphilippines.com/  Follow our social media pages:  • Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CNNPhilippines • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cnnphilippines/ • Twitter: https://twitter.com/cnnphilippines

Transcript

00:00 Cloud Kitchen made it to Forbes Asia's 100 to watch list in 2023.

00:04 Cravers Canteen co-founder Victor Lim tells us more and joins us tonight.

00:10 Thank you so much for joining us Victor.

00:12 Congratulations on this recognition from Forbes Asia.

00:16 So tell us what is a Cloud Kitchen?

00:19 Great. Thanks Rico. Thank you so much for having me.

00:22 So I run a Cloud Kitchen called Cravers Canteen.

00:25 You might have also heard of Cloud Kitchen

00:27 being referred to as a ghost kitchen, a virtual kitchen, dark kitchen.

00:31 Basically just means that we operate commercial kitchens

00:34 that serve food without the dine-in experience.

00:37 But they would always tell me that a Cloud Kitchen

00:40 is a confluence of various restaurant branches

00:44 that don't have an online system.

00:48 So they would just aggregate under a Cloud Kitchen

00:52 and sell their food.

00:54 Is it the same concept?

00:56 It's a similar concept.

00:58 So Cloud Kitchen is a term that was quite popularized

01:02 in the last four years or so with the pandemic of course.

01:05 And even just within these four years,

01:07 we've seen a tremendous amount of subcategories of Cloud Kitchens come up.

01:11 So one very popular category is exactly that.

01:13 You take a property, you divvy it up into smaller kitchens

01:16 and you sublease those out,

01:17 which we also experimented with in the early days of the pandemic.

01:20 But what is the main focus right now of Cravers Canteen?

01:24 Do you produce now your own food?

01:27 We do. We do.

01:27 Producing food has always been part of our business.

01:30 I guess what has changed for us over the last couple of years

01:33 is thinking about how we actually bring this food to our customers.

01:36 What are the channels that we want to distribute on?

01:38 What are the experiences that we want to build?

01:40 But the basic nature of Cloud Kitchens hasn't changed, right?

01:44 Which is that we produce food in commercial kitchens

01:47 that aren't necessarily customer-facing from the dine-in side,

01:51 but still creating as much value as we can

01:53 in terms of the actual process of feeding customers.

01:56 Why did you decide to get into the Cloud Kitchen business

02:00 rather than a customer face-in with a brick and mortar,

02:03 with a physical restaurant,

02:05 where you could also have housed your Cloud Kitchen,

02:08 but you have a physical frontage to be able to market yourselves?

02:13 Sure. Very valid question.

02:15 So I'd say, you know, kind of a bit right time at the right place.

02:20 We started thinking about this idea of Cravers back in 2019.

02:24 We had started to see the come up of GrabFood

02:26 and some of these other markets, delivery aggregators.

02:30 So obviously, very big market there, very growing segment.

02:33 So we knew that there was some opportunity to be caught there.

02:37 Now, that being said, of course,

02:39 just a couple of months after we incorporated,

02:42 pandemic struck, which is clearly the right time for us

02:47 to be looking into this particular segment.

02:49 And so when that happened, of course,

02:50 then we broadened our horizons, right?

02:52 We looked at a lot of different models that we can tinker around with

02:55 and really tried to see which particular Cloud Kitchen version

02:59 works the best for the Philippines.

03:01 How do we bring the most value to here?

03:03 And the food that you produce on a daily basis

03:07 is 100% made by Cravers Canteen?

03:10 Now it is, yes.

03:11 So everything that we produce is coming out of our kitchen.

03:15 Yeah, and fully produced from beginning to end by our team.

03:18 All right, what do you have in your menu?

03:20 What kind of meals, what kind of dishes are available

03:23 for your customers, which you serve in Metro Manila?

03:27 Sure.

03:28 So, you know, broadly, one of the things that we've shifted our mindset about

03:32 is that we don't want to feed people when they're just trying to splurge

03:35 or, you know, really treat themselves to something.

03:37 We want to feed people every day on the day-to-day basis.

03:40 So we thought a lot about what are the categories of food

03:43 that would be possible for people to eat every day

03:45 and not feel bad about it, not, you know, not get tired of it.

03:49 So one segment that came naturally to us was the healthy meal plans.

03:52 So we have a service called The Six Pack Chef,

03:54 which services meals that are, you know, high, sorry, high protein, low carb,

03:59 you know, very kind of focused on health and well-being,

04:03 you know, on a slightly premium segment, of course,

04:05 you know, using premium ingredients and things like that.

04:07 And how often do you change your meal plans?

04:12 Every day.

04:13 Every day?

04:13 Every day, different product assortment,

04:15 which is a bit where our tech comes into play.

04:19 So that was also a core learning for us, right?

04:21 As a customer, you don't want to be looking at the same menu every day, right?

04:24 You want different products.

04:25 You just get tired of the same food.

04:27 It doesn't matter what it is, right?

04:28 Even if it's your favorite food, no matter what, you'll get tired of it.

04:31 Eating it even once a week is already a habit.

04:33 I'm a creature of habit, but I also...

04:36 Sometimes, you know, if it's the same food every day or every other week,

04:41 then I usually say, "Oh, maybe I'll move on."

04:44 Of course.

04:44 To the next aggregator, right?

04:47 So how often do you change your menu for your customers?

04:52 So every day, there's a different assortment.

04:54 You know, we do our best not to repeat a product more than twice in a month.

04:58 So some of our best sellers, they'll show up twice within a month.

05:01 But most of the other time, it's just one product.

05:03 Or I'm sorry, it only shows up once in the month and it rotates daily.

05:07 So within our database, across the different meal plan services,

05:10 we have over a thousand different products

05:12 that somehow get cycled across the different timelines.

05:15 And what about delivery?

05:17 Because I know if it's a diet meal, if it's breakfast, lunch, and dinner,

05:21 it's all delivered in one go, right?

05:24 Between six to nine in the morning.

05:26 Is it the same service as well for Cravers Canteen?

05:29 Yes, exactly.

05:30 So some customers opt to have one meal with us a day,

05:33 some opt to have two, some opt to have three.

05:35 Regardless, they can choose when they want to have their meals delivered.

05:37 We'll deliver them all at the same time for your convenience,

05:40 at the time that you want us to deliver it.

05:42 And the idea is really just that it's there.

05:44 It's there for you.

05:45 You don't have to think about what you're going to order for dinner that night.

05:48 It's just already there.

05:49 It's already available.

05:50 You just have to heat it and you're good to go.

05:51 Of course, the customer experience has to be seamless and worry-free.

05:57 But what about prices?

05:59 Have you increased amidst rising inflation?

06:03 And we just had that report from Kary Kator

06:05 on problems in the agricultural sector.

06:09 Yeah, well, definitely a--

06:11 Has it been a challenge for you?

06:12 Absolutely.

06:13 Definitely has been a challenge, just generally dealing

06:16 with the inflation on multiple different angles.

06:19 But precisely to this point, and because we're

06:21 trying to create an experience that is sustainable for customers

06:25 to be eating it every day, earlier this year,

06:27 we launched a second meal plan service called Crave Daily, which

06:30 is meals that are delivered at 150 pesos.

06:33 So packed meals at 150 pesos each, which we thought was great value,

06:37 particularly at a time like this when delivery prices are going up,

06:40 everything is going up.

06:42 And so we do want to have a stable, locked-in price for customers

06:45 that's affordable on a daily basis.

06:48 But what we're also learning is that, actually, we

06:50 can even bring it down further.

06:51 And so that's the goal as well.

06:53 But your margins then will be really stretched.

06:56 Getting thinner and thinner.

06:58 How many employees do you have at the moment at Cravers Canteen?

07:02 Overall, we have a little over 100 employees now.

07:06 And so primarily through our main production facility.

07:09 But with that, we're able to produce quite substantially more meals.

07:13 Again, enabled through our operational efficiencies,

07:15 as well as the technical support systems that we've integrated.

07:18 And how are you using and embracing artificial intelligence

07:22 to be able to level up your services?

07:25 Sure.

07:26 Well, not sure if I'd go so far as to say artificial intelligence,

07:30 but regular--

07:31 Smart tech.

07:32 Smart tech is something that I would describe it as.

07:35 Where really, we realize that a lot of the procedures in the kitchen

07:39 can be automated, can be taught through a system.

07:42 So now, our tech is integrated from the front end all the way to the back end.

07:46 Meaning that when a customer orders, that will eventually

07:49 translate to practical instructions for our team.

07:51 It'll tell us how many kilos of tomatoes we need to buy.

07:54 It'll tell us what they need to be prepared as,

07:56 how they need to be prepared.

07:58 Exactly.

07:58 And those are the type of things that just became an integrated part

08:01 of our operations, because the tech does it for us.

08:03 So what is your plan for Cravers Canteen over the next three to five years?

08:08 Is this going IPO?

08:09 Is this going to be listed on the stock market?

08:12 Well, it doesn't hurt to think about those things.

08:15 Think big.

08:16 Dream big, of course.

08:18 No, of course, we have a very, very long way to go.

08:20 Recently, we started to enter more smaller communities,

08:24 corporate canteens, school campuses, generally areas

08:28 where we're able to really create a lot of value where it wasn't there before.

08:32 So that's one opportunity that we see as very exciting.

08:34 And briefly, how can they reach out to Cravers Canteen?

08:37 They can find us at cravers.com with a K, or they can just reach out to us there.

08:43 We have all of our different brands and contact details there that they can find.

08:47 Congratulations on the success of Cravers Canteen.

08:50 Thank you so much.

08:51 In Forbes Asia's 100 to watch list in 2023.

08:56 Victor Lim, co-founder, great to have you with us.

08:58 Thank you so much, Rico.

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