Throughout the year 2021, like other sectors of the economy, the food business of Bangladesh has seen various ups and downs. The beginning of this year, however, began to show a glimmer of hope after overcoming last year’s Corona crisis; but since the beginning of March, the whole country went into severe lockdown again as the corona infection has been on the rise. As corona outbreaks continued to grow, buyer turnout was much lower, with lockdowns pushing the restaurant business to the brink of collapse. Although there was no opportunity to take food in the restaurant, there was an opportunity to buy food and eat at home. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to manage a restaurant by relying solely on takeouts. Our traditional hotel-restaurant business is not designed to takeout but to be designed for dining-in. So, many have not been able to keep up with this completely new style of selling foods.
Although the sales have gone lower, the cost has not decreased. As a result, owners wanted to reduce costs by dismissing restaurant workers. However, as it is very difficult to find skilled workers in this industry, many restaurant owners have tried to retain the workers by cutting their salaries off or by lowering payment, which is not realistic. Moreover, many restaurants have been closed due to not being able to pay the bills of gas, water, electricity and rent. It is estimated that more than 30 percent of restaurants have been closed permanently. Economic analysts believe that this number will increase in the coming days. There are more than 60,000 hotels and restaurants in Dhaka metropolitan alone and the number of workers involved in the food business is over 2 million. Moreover, about 20 million people in the country are directly and indirectly involved in this sector. All of them have been affected by the Corona epidemic. Even then, there was no major support from the government for those involved in the business. Although the list was only nominal, no incentive came. On top of that, various difficulties have been added to it. No restaurant worker of our country gets an identity card as the restaurant business sector is not considered as an industry. As a result, the list of help seekers could not be prepared appropriately. So restaurant workers have to live a dehumanized life by losing their jobs or working without payment.
While restaurant merchants may not be able to adapt to the idea of ’Takeout’, there is another service in the food business called ‘Food Home Delivery’ that has been in operation for a long time. Whose job is to deliver food ordered over the telephone or online to the buyer’s home. Many people do not have the opportunity to go to the restaurant if they want to because of the busyness of modern life. In this case, this food home delivery service is a great way to taste the food of the restaurant from sitting at home or in the office. Although this service has been running all over the world for a long time, its journey in Bangladesh started very recently. Hungrinaki was the first company to launch a food delivery service in 2013. Then Foodpanda, Pathao Food, Uber Eats, Shohoz Food, Efood and some other companies enriched this sector one by one. The idea of enjoying restaurant food easily and whenever you want has recently become popular in Bangladesh. The Corona epidemic broke out around the world when the service began to mature in our country, ending the business growth phase. While other businesses were affected by the epidemic, this was the ideal time for food home delivery services. The range of this service was already increasing in Bangladesh. The tendency of people to stay indoors during epidemics makes it even more popular. At present, about a dozen companies are providing food delivery services in Bangladesh.
According to this year’s e-Cab data, more than a lakh of food parcels are being delivered using these platforms every day. An average of 950 taka is being ordered per parcel. Food delivery companies are providing food worth around 6 crore taka daily. Which has taken the annual growth of this sector to over two thousand crore taka. Although at the end of the year, the current pioneer of food delivery services FoodPanda, has caused some inconvenience in the case of VAT evasion of 3.5 crore taka, it is needless to say that the range of this service will not decrease further. However, FoodPanda’s VAT evasion case is saying that law enforcement agencies will be more vigilant in maintaining law and order in the sector in the coming days.
In the economic crisis caused by the Corona epidemic, another new service called ‘Cloud Kitchen’ is emerging in the food business of Bangladesh. Although this commercial term is not well known to us, many of us are working on this service without knowing it and are constantly trying to improve the service. In a nutshell, ‘Cloud Kitchen’ is a restaurant system where the restaurant has no physical existence. Our conventional restaurant business has two dining arrangements; one is dining-in or eating at a restaurant and the other is dining-out or taking food home by parcel. The dine-out service is now quite popular due to the food home delivery companies that have been discussed earlier. Now with the exception of the dine-in section from the conventional restaurant business, the only thing that stands out is the ‘Cloud Kitchen’. Now this service must seem familiar, right? In this system, the ordered food is delivered to the buyer’s home only through his own team or any food home delivery company.
The cost of running a business is greatly reduced as there is no need to rent a place for a restaurant. As a result, the common people of our country, especially women are providing these business services with little investment. They prepare food in their own kitchens and deliver it to the buyers themselves or through food delivery companies like Foodpanda or Hungrinaki. In this way, many women in the country have started contributing to the economy from the comfort of their own homes, consumers are also able to taste good food at low prices as the cost of doing business is low. The rise of ‘Cloud Kitchen’ is quite noticeable, especially in the case of cakes, puddings and a variety of afternoon snacks like singara, samucha, puri and patties. Moreover, they are being able to create their own fan groups by creating pages using social platforms like Facebook. Although ‘Cludio’ officially brings the ‘Cloud Kitchen’ to Bangladesh in 2019, the contribution of ordinary women of the country in making the service popular is undeniable. They are constantly contributing to the improvement of the ‘Cloud Kitchen’ by providing additional financial support to the family in the stagnant economic system, especially in the Corona epidemic. In 2021, we saw the popularity of ‘Cloud Kitchen’ is increasing day by day due to the growing food-tech industry. It’s needless to say, in upcoming days instead of a personal Facebook page based on ‘Cloud Kitchens’ like ‘Mehzabin’s Bakery’, ‘Sweet Daisy’, ‘Swapnoferi’, ‘Prothoma Kitchen’ or ‘Jaya’s Back & Joy’, we will see more big brands besides ‘Cludio’, ‘Ghost Kitchen’ or ‘Live Green’. Cludio has already received 5 Lakhs dollar foreign investment.
Although the food business was not in a good position at the beginning of this year, there has been considerable effort to overcome the economic stagnation caused by Corona as the level of infection continues to decline towards the end of the year. We are watching the rise of food-tech dependent food home delivery or cloud kitchen services along with the conventional restaurant system in the changed lifestyle. We may hope that food-based businesses will be able to recover from the downturn very soon.
