There’s an interesting trend in food and beverage industry these days, where they’re borrowing ideas from the software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry. 

Upfront subscription pricing for restaurants

A famous and delicious ramen shop Yume Ko Watere started subscription packages for their customers, pretty much like how a SaaS charges you say $10 per month for a hosting plan. For that ramen shop, their pricing plans are:

• $99 unlimited ramen for 1 month
• $599 unlimited ramen for 1 year only valid on Tue-Thu
• $799 unlimited ramen for 1 year any day

A new type of SaaS - sustenance-as-a-service haha! It puts a whole new meaning to ramen profitability! ?  Jokes aside, it makes so much sense, especially for shops with a huge loyal following of regulars. The shop can lock in more upfront sales (which can then be used for expansion for example), instead of relying on the drips of daily cash flow. Subscription ensures more traffic, and gives them a mechanism to get more traffic during low periods of the day/week. Fans get special treatment and unlimited food, but there’s a natural barrier to abuse since not everyone can eat the same food every day, multiple times a day. 

Of course, there’s also subscription boxes for food. It’s not a new thing. There’s Candy Japan where you get sent new Japanese candy every month, for $29 per month.

Cloud kitchens

An even bigger food tech trend is the emergence of cloud kitchens, or remote, centralised kitchens. Pretty much like how startups and indie makers now create products that run off cloud computing platforms like AWS or Google, instead of the old way of building and maintaining their own servers, cloud kitchens are the AWS of food startups, handling everything from supplies to cooking and finally delivery.

The online food delivery industry is worth billions, and with cloud kitchens, anyone with a food idea can start up off the cloud kitchen. No need for massive upfront capital investments for real estate, staff training etc. There’s also economies of scale at work here when there’s multiple food startups under one cloud kitchen. It’s also great for restaurants to scale up their business, as brick and mortar restaurants aren’t optimised for online food delivery. Smart City Kitchens is one such platform in Singapore. 

Imagine a day when any entrepreneur can create a food startup just as easily as an indie maker can make a MVP in a week! Such fascinating times!