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Virtual restaurants, kitchens offer focused, cost-effective culinary business alternatives
Virtual is the new viral in the culinary industry, with restaurateurs focusing solely on delivery-only services and using shared kitchen spaces to cook up meals that diners purchase online.
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Stock illustration of virtual food services (shutterstock.com/G-Stock Studio/File)
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any Indonesians aspiring to start a culinary business are shifting from the traditional brick-and-mortar concept to the virtual, because the latter is cheaper and easier to maintain. It has also proven to be more resilient as people spend more time at home amid the restrictive COVID-19 policies.
Nadhifa “Dilla” Irmadilla, 24, tried her luck in 2019 when she opened a virtual restaurant featuring her favorite ingredient: curry leaves, which she fell in love during her culinary arts program in Malaysia. Dapur Koja serves rice bowls topped with salt-and-pepper chicken or buttermilk chicken flavored with freshly picked curry leaves from her backyard.
“I started Dapur Koja at the end of 2019 in the kitchen of my parents’ house in Bintaro [Tangerang Selatan]," Dilla told The Jakarta Post on April 2. "At first, I only sold buttermilk chicken through preorders with the help of my family’s maid."
Later, Dilla signed up Dapur Koja as a merchant on GoFood, the food delivery arm of superapp Gojek, as well as on competitor Grab's GrabFood feature. She also hired a helper for another virtual kitchen she opened at her grandparents’ house in Kemang, South Jakarta, to cater to customers in Jakarta. She uses paper packaging with complimentary wooden spoons.
Dilla said that focusing on online food services and not setting up a physical establishment helped her cut capital costs. Adopting the virtual kitchen concept helped her business to be more resilient during the hard times brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Sales at all branches decreased in the first weeks of the pandemic. But it started bouncing back around the fasting month,” she said, referring to last year’s Ramadan, which started on April 23.
Today, Dapur Koja’s Kemang kitchen sells 15 to 20 rice bowls per day, while the Bintaro kitchen sells 10 to 15 rice bowls per day.
