GKB: A cloud platform empowering smaller restaurants

During the month of Ramadan, profit margins take a dip as diners eat less outside. Moreover, on and off Covid-19 lockdowns have made it much harder to keep fast food restaurants afloat.

A Banasree-based restaurant in the city named Burfe, which specialises in burgers, was also experiencing the jolts from such impacts. Co-owner of the eatery, Muktadir Rohan, had to find another route to success as the timing of the launch of this pursuit, in 2019, did little justice to him.

Contemplating his options, he found a way soon because, at the same time, an "internet restaurant platform" was making rounds in the food-tech market. This platform, called Ghost Kitchen Bangladesh (GKB), introduced a new model in the country.

While during the last Ramadan, Burfe's burgers did not sell much, they still fared pretty well in terms of revenue, all thanks to Ghost Kitchen.

GKB kicked off a haleem brand - Haleem Guys - during Ramadan. Burfe subscribed to this haleem and sold it throughout the month. As the demand for haleem was great, they pocketed quite a bit of profit.

GKB was responsible for creating the haleem brand, and they advertised and marketed it on digital platforms. They also prepared the menu, recipe and all the ingredients, and sold them to partners like Burfe. Burfe then used these ingredients, followed guidelines of GKB, assembled the end product and sold it to its customers.

So, what is Ghost Kitchen Bangladesh?

In a conversation with The Business Standard, Syed Tahmid Zaman, CEO and co-founder of GKB, explained the business model, reflected on the journey of creating the platform, and shared his future plans.

"Ghost Kitchen Bangladesh itself is not a traditional restaurant with dine-in facilities, or even a cloud kitchen company. Rather as a food-tech company, it provides restaurants with virtual menu concepts or virtual brands, technology and food safety training," Tahmid explained.

Globally, internet restaurant platforms usually consist of different brands for different food categories. Likewise, they have created brands such as the above-mentioned Haleem Guys. And there are other brands too.

Syed Tahmid Zaman

"We create those particular brands targeting the market and customer base," Tahmid continued. "And these brands do not have physical dedicated restaurants either – they operate in the cloud. Ghost Kitchen Bangladesh is responsible for creating, marketing and advertising these brands through digitals mediums."

To be brief, in this B2B (business to business) model they provide its partners who subscribe to the brand with the brand's menu, recipe and food ingredients. And then the restaurant themselves sell the end products. This way, for example, Burfe can make an additional income along with its current revenue.

One might ask why these random restaurants are interested in partnering with GKB. 

According to Tahmid, these brands and associated food items are popular enough that restaurants are encouraged to pursue this business model to increase their revenue. 

To be clear, each restaurant has its own menu, but GKB just adds something extra. This business model supports small and medium restaurants who are struggling to survive due to fierce competition, specially from big chains, which enjoy the advantages of having an established brand name, lower cost of operations, higher marketing budgets and access to better technologies.

GKB has two production facilities, one in Tejgaon and the other one in Moghbazar. They have five more brands just like Haleem Guys (Friggy's, Party Pizza, Wrappo, CheekyBite, and Moolk-Shake). For example, Friggy's is a brand specialised for burgers, whereas they have Party Pizza for only pizzas. For each and every brand, there's separate food development and marketing teams. Till today, they have seven virtual restaurant outlets including Burfe.

Here is a little back story

A few years back, Tahmid was dining out with two of his friends at a burger restaurant in Dhaka. During their casual chat, the idea of a "delivery-only burger joint" came up. The concept was that one doesn't have to spend money in a dedicated dine-in place.

However, this casual conversation stuck in Tahmid's mind. He gave the idea some thought. "Just for fun, I formulated a plan for my 'imagined' burger company Friggy's. And as I'm also a graphics designer, I designed a logo, packaging, and thought of a few menu items for the brand."

However, the plan did not proceed any further for a while.

Sometime later, while he was travelling in Canada, he was intrigued by a Toronto based cloud kitchen company - Ghost Kitchen Brands. Contacting the founder of the company, a meeting was set up. He learned about the cloud kitchen model and thought it would be wise to implement the idea in Bangladesh.

From Friggy’s to Wrappo to Party Pizza, GKB has different brands for different food categories. Photo: Courtesy

How is the journey so far?

"Fast forward to March 2020, I pitched the idea, while securing the pre-seed funding, and incorporated our startup as Ghost Kitchen Bangladesh Limited. Apart from investor funding, I have bootstrapped as well."

GKB officially started in June 2020 with their first brand Friggy's. They started delivering first orders in October. Till this day, Friggy's is their most successful brand.

"We have already sold 50,000+ items from our network in the last 7-8 months, and served over 11,000 online orders."

"At GKB, we are scaling at a rapid speed while ensuring growth for our restaurant partners as we have a target of opening 50 internet restaurant outlets by December 2021. By the end of December 2022, this number will hopefully rise to more than 100," said Tahmid.

In the very beginning, GKB was engaged in the B2C model. Presently they are engaged in both B2B and B2C models. Over time, their main focus has shifted towards the former.

"Any restaurant, fast food shop or cafe can subscribe to our food franchises, take advantage of our branding and technology, and increase their revenue and also improve kitchen operation with our advanced tech platform called Onnow.io. Over this little time, we have garnered responses that's beyond our initial expectations."

Prospect of Ghost Kitchen Bangladesh

Tahmid is very clear on the matter that this venture is not detrimental to existing dine-in places. The goal is to complement the existing small and medium sized restaurants rather than to compete with them.

According to him, the Bangladeshi restaurant industry is lagging behind in terms of using technological solutions. In this untapped space, Ghost Kitchen Bangladesh comes to the forefront.

"To sum up, innovation in both food and technology has the potential to make this industry sustainable, giving enough room for both restaurants and cloud kitchens to excel parallelly."

While the co-founder has plans for cross-border growth in the near future, at the current moment, he is more focused on enlarging the business locally.

For Tahmid, the vision is to empower 60,000+ restaurants with their tech-based solutions, unique food concepts and innovation, and marketing and branding.

"Along with new restaurant partners, we will keep on increasing our product and brand portfolio. In the coming months, our unique fried rice bowl brand Fuiyoh is going to be launched. It will be followed by an Australian Halal Snack Pack (HSP) brand called Snackmate."

"In terms of kitchen expansion, we will open a production kitchen in Uttara soon and form partnerships with nearby restaurants. As the number of restaurant partners increases, our production kitchen numbers will increase too, to provide supply-chain support to them."

As far as international expansion is concerned, GKB has already received an offer from a cloud kitchen venture in Pakistan to incorporate their brand Friggy's. In the meantime, they are building a good network in countries like Nepal and India where they plan to expand at first.