The nation-wide shutdown due to COVID-19 has severely hit the F&B industry and local restaurants, causing nearly 35% of them to shut down. As India continues to fight the Covid-19 pandemic the utmost importance is being to hygiene and safety in the restaurant industry. Rapid technology adoption is one of the new trends that is picking up pace in the hospitality industry to gain customers’ trust. One of the latest strategies being adopted is live streaming kitchen spaces. In order to calm anxious consumers, restaurants are adopting a new approach by live-streaming their kitchens, which allows customers to see for themselves the conditions in which their delivery and even dine-in orders are being prepared and packaged.
How Live Streaming Kitchens Can Help Win Customers’ Trust During The Corona Crisis
A live stream of the kitchen proceedings assures customers of the hygiene compliance and sanitization standards that a restaurant is following.
Delhi based cloud kitchen setup, ‘Instapizza’ was one of the first restaurants to start the live broadcasting of their kitchens. The ‘Crustflix by Instapizza’ platform enables customers to view how chefs are preparing pizzas and other food items and whether they are following the necessary guidelines.
Luxury hospitality chain, Roseate Hotels & Resorts is also live-streaming the feed from its kitchens. The live feed is not only limited to the delivery orders but also broadcasts food preparation for the dine-in guests.
“Radical transparency in hygiene processes is essential as it allows customers to know what the brands are doing to maintain the most effective and strict hygiene standards” – Ashwin Jain, Founder, Instapizza.
Live streaming the kitchen ensures that the current and prospective customers have full transparency and visibility on exactly what restaurants are doing to keep their teams, premises, and food 100% hygienic and safe.
In addition, putting kitchen operations on public display would also help keep the restaurants accountable to their own hygiene standards such as frequent symptom checks, handwashing, sanitizing every 20 minutes, deep sanitization every two hours, etc.
It ensures complete transparency of the preparation of the food. Live-streaming kitchens will ensure that customers are confident about their food being cooked in a kitchen with the highest level of sanitary and safety standards.
In this ‘new normal’, restaurants have no choice but to adapt to change. Restaurants that considered technology as a luxury must now adapt it as a necessity. Dining out will cease to be how it was. From the selection of menu, cashless bill payments to viewing the food being cooked live, the major operations in restaurants will be supported by modern technology.
Even after a cure for COVID is found, this trend will remain in some form. Restaurant technology will also help reinforce consumer confidence in these trying times, thereby increasing footfall for restaurants.
As the trend of live streaming kitchens has started to pick up in the foodservice space, it is yet to be seen how customers will respond to it in the long run. Although the idea of live-streaming restaurant kitchens seems to be the need of the hour, restaurants must take all possible measures to obtain consent and maintain the privacy of the cooks and workers that are adapting to this new technique. All in all, live streaming kitchens is an excellent technique to win the customer’s trust.
Should restaurants adopt live-streaming kitchens as a solution to curb the fear of the virus amongst consumers? Let us know in the comments below!
