Qualitaly_115

FEB. MAR. 2020 XII in numbers. Just download one of the different Apps available on your mobile phone and order a meal when you feel like eating, without moving from home. Lunch or dinner is served in a few minutes. A sector that is worth 35 billion dollars worldwide and, according to forecasts, in 2030 will rise to 365 billion dollars. In 2018, one in three Italians ordered food online or by phone. A new way to get food that capitalizes over 3 billion euros; a considerable amount that has led to the creation of a new formula: the E-Cloud kitchen or Dark kitchen , also called Ghost Kitchen . Cloud kitchens are environments equipped with all the necessary equipment for cooking, where chefs and other related figures work, optimizing time, resources and purchases, preparing food that arrives through food delivery to the homes of those who order them. There are kitchens, where time and place have a relative importance, suitable to produce restaurant ‘level’ dishes, sometimes able to make dishes very similar to those you see on the menus of starred restaurants. Unlike the traditional restaurant that prefers the town centre, the dark kitchen positions its stoves in an ‘astute’, strategic place, to help home deliveries to both private individuals and traditional restaurants, when they are unable to cope with delivery due to high online demand. In these cases, the restaurant delegates the Dark kitchen to support it. The latter is ‘obliged’ to make the requested dishes according to precise guidelines and recipes of the restaurant which, in some cases, since they are recognisable brands, to guarantee the exclusivity of the product, sends one of its chefs to the appointed kitchen. Cloud kitchens do not require large spaces: about 30/40 square meters are enough to prepare food and about 20 square meters to store the goods. For the set-up, i.e. stoves, oven, blast chiller, cold rooms and various furnishings, more or less 150 thousand euros are sufficient. Numbers that vary proportionally according to their volume of business. ONLINE LUNCH IS SERVED In the footsteps of the Cloud kitchen, new, increasingly high-performance, interactive and experimental realities are emerging in the articulated world of food. One of these is Foorban, a company born in Milan in 2016, from an idea of three local guys. Starting from the need to eat a healthy and balanced dish without sacrificing speed, a need not fully satisfied by the offer available on the market, they decided to prepare food for the lunch break in a new way: a corporate catering format with a high innovative content. A physical store with dishes already portioned, wrapped in 100% recyclable packaging and placed in large refrigerated showcases, ready to be picked up by the employee. On the walls of the store, some screens display the nutritional information of the dishes; finally, an App allows the employee to book the dish directly from the desk, in order to skip the checkout at lunchtime. Starting with a staff of 4 people - with menu processing, cooking and packaging - and the equipment strictly necessary to satisfy a menu that was initially very limited (only 4 dishes), today Foorban, thanks to the individual previous experience in the catering field of its founders, has increased its turnover and has doubled its staff. It improved the layout and expanded the spaces which, already this year, the members would like to increase from 300 to 1000 square meters with the aim of transforming Foorban into a central hub for production, storage of ingredients and logistics. Here under, Marco Mottolese, CEO and Co-founder Foorban, outlines the key steps that have led to the success of the Milanese company. FOORBAN, AN EXAMPLE OF ‘DARK KITCHEN’... More than a Dark kitchen, we like to think of our model as a central kitchen in which we prepare the recipes we distribute through both b2b and b2c channels. What do you offer and to whom do you propose your product? We want to be the reference point for the corporate lunch break, both for employees and companies. The product has always been our focus, and it has been what has allowed us to position ourselves as a quality service. Around the product, we have built an office canteen format that allows us to be the reference partner for HR and Services managers who are looking for quality catering. Our 4.0 canteens do not have a kitchen, they are modular and require very little time and space to be installed. And they deeply rely on the customer experience. We also have a b2b delivery service for smaller companies, with the possibility for the individual employee to order and plan their lunches via App, and then collect them using our branded refrigerators that we place inside the companies. In figures, what have been Foorban’s developments since its start to date? We have delivered about 500,000 lunches between Milan and Rome, with more than 1000 recipes prepared. We have already opened three company canteen offices between Milan and Rome, serving a company population of 600, 400 and 200 employees respectively, with breakfast/cafeteria service. Three more canteen offices will open by May, two in Milan and one in Rome. In addition, with our delivery service, we have served the employees of over 100 companies. How do you choose the menu? We offer “healthy”, quality and affordable food. Our service is based on a healthy and tasty food range made of complete and balanced dishes. The chefs and nutritionists create a different menu every week. Culinary research is our strong point. We experiment with ingredients and cooking methods, paying attention to emerging trends and all food needs. Our menu offers a selection of unique balanced dishes, but also first and MAGAZINE