Everyone in the world has suffered through this pandemic, but we can say that the Food & Beverage industry, from café, restaurants, hotels to even your local grocery store, is the most affected. This industry is not known to be technology savvy, with no usage at all in some cases. Then of marketing, this is still a pretty word in the industry that not many know how to use correctly to attract attention, let alone trade.
This pandemic has completely reshuffled all the known mindsets from before; the surge of online delivery aggregators, dark kitchen concepts, and food industry technology has emerged like Spring flower blossoming.
So what have we seen so far….
While food and beverage preferences are constantly evolving, the pandemic changed into overdrive, with shoppers turning to online food shopping, pickup, and delivery services. Companies adjusted and adapted. For example, with their vital restaurant business curtailed, many producers, processors, and distributors pivoted to new markets in retail grocery and began supplying increasingly popular subscription meal services.
Now, as in-store shopping and restaurant dining return to normal, consumers who have experienced remote purchasing won’t want to turn back the clock on these newfound conveniences. They’re likely to look for expanded options for a mode of buying that has worked well for them. Another changing consumer preference is sustainability. At a time of greater focus on environmental and social justice issues, consumers are pushing for more detailed information on product sourcing, environmental impact, and worker welfare. Tastes are evolving as well. While Italian food continues to be the top international food category, other options, especially Mexican, have surged in popularity.
According to a Bank of America report, with so many people dining at home, fruit and vegetable producers, grocery stores, and snack manufacturers have been among the top-performing industries during the pandemic. Brisk sales have left many companies with higher levels of cash to respond creatively to changing consumer preferences. Fuller coffers may also provide some cushion at a time when rising wages and a recovering economy are making it harder for food and beverage businesses, particularly retail groceries, to hire and pay the workers while maintaining their profit margins.
How’s the industry responding to this new norm/consumer behavior?
Naturally, everyone decided to jump on the bandwagon of online order apps. This was the most convenient way to set up the delivery mechanism for any food & beverage business. This is where the problem emerges, consumers avid the convenience, but there is no loyalty to the product provider. SMEs in the Food & Beverage rely heavily upon the aggregator as their avenue to customer outreach. It is resulting in many losses due to the ever-increasing price of the commission and the business running overhead post-pandemic.
Though this real test on the business, owners who are more business savvy have used this opportunity to reshuffle their marketing approach from building their app, coming up with innovative loyalty incentives to managing their aggregators’ usage ratio to their delivery effort. The result is astounding!
There have been plenty of virtual restaurant brands emerging with the same kitchen as Maze Tacos & Good Burger in JLT. Then there is the talk on every F&B industry owners’ tongue – Cloud kitchen.
A cloud kitchen is a delivery-only restaurant that has no physical space for dine-in. It relies entirely on online orders placed through online food aggregators or an online ordering-enabled website or mobile app by https://www.posist.com. Famous cloud kitchen brands have also emerged from prized operators such as Kitopi. Following its USD 415 million Series C investment round, UAE-based cloud kitchen platform Kitopi has become the MENA region’s third billion-dollar company by Hospitality News Middle East.
So what is the future?
Innovative thinking and commercial agility are a few vital yet not as widely recognized attributes a Food & Beverage operator needs to have. It needs to be hard-wired to their ecosystem to survive, let alone grow with. Technology continues to evolve as well as the industry, any future hopefuls wishing to enter the market. Not only do they need to have the mindset but also acute senses to know what they wish to achieve and how solid their product is before entering.
Peggy Li, F & B mentor on the Jupiter Business Mentors online mentoring platform, will be sharing her experiences and talk about “How to Capture the Hearts, Minds, and Stomachs of your Customer?”
Don’t miss this opportunity! The webinar is on Nov 15, 2021, at 4 pm GST.
