How Virtual Kitchens Will Redefine Everything We Know About The Restaurant.
Growing up, I witnessed my mom taking huge sums of loans to rent a retail shop which often ended in debt. Today, my mum sells on Facebook and WhatsApp and doing quite well. Thanks to the smartphone and the internet.
We have come so far as a human race that we tend to forget.
Just in the case of my mother, my 22-year-old friend Sandra owns a shop on the internet that now takes care of her 2 siblings and sick mother after they lost their father. Today, Sandra runs one of the biggest Instagram hair shops in Accra and pays over GHC 10,000 school fees for her siblings- of which one is in the uni and the other, senior high school. Surprisingly, Sandra just completed university and currently undertaking her national service.
How was it even possible in the early 2000s for a young person like Sandra to own a shop?
From work to communication, technology has changed everything we thought we knew about the world. And, its beauty is conspicuous in how it has democratized industries- something the restaurant is yet to fully experience.
In 2019, I had never used any virtual tool before. Yeah! Not even skype. I would have boarded a flight from Accra to Lagos and from Lagos to Nairobi for meetings and conferences which is expensive but today with just a cedi bundle, I can connect with the entire globe as a bloc.
In 2008, I and my siblings used to be moving in and out of the post office with our keys to receive letters from colleagues abroad. People were renting office spaces, stocking them with cathode-ray tube computers, and charging huge sums of money per every minute spent on the internet. And for that, I remember we had to still join queues to even get that pay-to-surf opportunity.
Today, the internet café and post offices that used to be around in neighborhoods are in our pockets; right on our smartphones.
Unfortunately, the restaurant which is very crucial for life keeps on struggling to exist on the phone basically because restaurants managers still see the internet as little as an avenue to do the same old things.
The rigid restaurant system we see today dates back as far as 1100 CE and nothing have really changed ever since. This is not to discredit the role food apps have played out in recent times but until we break the brick-and-mortar monopoly that has characterized the industry, there will be a long way to go.
In a more relatable experience, I contacted one top restaurant located in Labone, a commercial suburb in Accra on a food app requesting yam chips to be delivered to me at Legon which is less than 10 minutes ride from their premise, and sadly the restaurant responded: “We are sorry, we don’t do deliveries unless you come and pick up when you pay through Mtn mobile money on this same number”
This means I would need to write their mobile money number down, and manually input to send them GHC 55, board a car to pick up before I can peacefully enjoy the meal. To keep it short, I didn’t buy the food and I don’t remember advising any of my friends to ever do the same.
This experience cuts across Ghana because the true intent of technology has been shadowed with brick-and-mortar thinking.
Online food delivery and food tech, in general, are here to stay. Smartphones and internet penetration are on a dramatic rise in Ghana and it’s getting seriously bigger every day. Consumers now want convenience and that, they no longer want to go to the restaurant but they want the restaurant to come to them- just like the bolt coming to their yard and the café now in their pocket. However, to bring local restaurants into the mainstream and for food technologies to achieve scale, we would need to start tackling the real issues from the foundation other than meeting them halfway.
We need to start asking ourselves why with all the tech, food continues to remain so expensive to buy online with very few food entrepreneurs becoming winners. And the answer will lie in understanding how restaurants especially local-owned come into being and how they grow.
Virtual Restaurant concepts present us the opportunity to move out of the rat race and truly embrace the democratization that the internet presents. Through Virtual kitchens, cash-constraint local food entrepreneurs can cross-border with our rich cuisines and heritage without the cost of a kitchen.
The case of MrBeast owned by 23-year-old Jimmy Donaldson, which opened in Dec 2020, launched at 300 locations simultaneously in the USA, serving an average of 12,000 burgers a day at as low as 6 dollars should only tell us a story about the future of all great restaurants. The future of all great restaurants will not be anything like the monopoly we have been witnessing rather it will truly embrace technology, it will be virtual, democratized, and affordable.
And most important for Africa, it shall provide us with the opportunity to empower local food entrepreneurs in light of the ever-growing expensive real estate industry and glaring statistics. By 2030, our continent will be having the largest workforce in the world, Over 1.1 billion young people will be roaming around the continent in search of jobs and better opportunities. This can turn out to be our biggest moment or the worst population tsunami in history.
At Bukyia, we are aware but much certain about this great future awaiting Africans and we will be part of shaping it from one bowl to the other, starting from Accra Ghana.
if this read was delicious, why don’t you give us a follow?
This writeup was produced whilst listening to Black Sherif feat. Burna Boy — Second Sermon Remix [Official Audio].
Written by
Nathaniel- CEO, Bukyia.
