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Food Plane

As we usher into a new world, businesses are pushed to transform and adapt at unprecedented speed in order to survive. We are slowly grasping and embracing a ‘new normal’ at a time when business as usual is no longer the ‘norm’. Tourism and F&B being the most impacted industries post COVID 19 and the food delivery is going to be the future, to replace the current brick and mortar restaurants. Current challenge in the food-delivery model is timely delivering of hot and freshly cooked food at the door steps. Second big challenge is the economic crisis in F&B sector due to safe distancing and other safety measures. Considering the fact that majority of F&B players belongs to SME sector, there is an urgent need to revolutionize the current food delivery models by decreasing overheads, increasing revenues and all this, without compromising the safety of the delivery riders. It is a key time to reflect and rethink how we must innovate to not only adapt, but have the foresight to kickstart a change in our business in this new world.
As an F&B group, we have been constantly innovating new concepts in the F&B industry. As a bid to resolve the issue of the lack of manpower, and to put manpower to more efficient use, we are the first to implement a food delivery robot for room service, which has since been running successfully at our Cali Rochester outlet. This time, we would again like to reinvent the wheel by proposing a new digital innovative food delivery concept to serve piping hot food, at a better value-for-money price point to consumers. In the next few pages, we will further detail the proposed business concept, the key problems it aims to solve and the delivery mechanics.

ABOUT NJ GROUP

NJ Group owns various restaurants nestled in reputed hospitality brands - Relish at Ascott Residences Raffles Singapore, with the Ascott group owning more than 600 properties worldwide, and Cali at Park Avenue Rochester & Changi, Singapore. Our restaurants cater to the multiracial local community as well as nationalities, high corporate profile expats and tourists, from all around the world, with the purpose of offering innovative fusion food and a comforting dining experience to more people of the world.
With the belief that the core of one’s spirit comes from new experiences, NJ Group aspires to continue to create out-of-the-box, innovative F&B experiences for every guest who dines at an NJ group of restaurants. Beyond that we also strive to use our own experiences to not only find unique solutions to help individual businesses but the industry at large at a local and even global level playing field. NJ team is passionate about creating the dining experience, where you can rejuvenate, make connections, entertain guests or have business meetings in a quiet, classy ambience.

Trigger For Change

As F&B restaurants across the island rapidly close their doors as part of the containment strategy, many are forced to adopt a new business model of heavily relying on an online presence and delivery partners to keep their day-to-day operations going. With this sudden and drastic change, F&B businesses like us have experienced multiple points of friction while adapting their business, a few of our challenges being

Instead of just trying to make the current situation work, this led us to think about how the current F&B operations and food delivery can be revamped with an innovative business concept based on intelligent digital platform using AI and ML platforms. We would like to take this as an opportunity to adopt a new business model which will not only benefit us but also to other industry players across the globe. It will not only support the current restaurant and central kitchen business but also become a model business framework for individuals who want to kickstart a business without any brick and mortar investment, heavily relying on an online presence and delivery partners while adding new revenue to the current businesses. This will also provide opportunities to many who are interested to start a business with very low initial investment and very low operating cost by renting a delivery vehicle and acquiring the food from a central kitchen or from the choice of the restaurant, without the need to hire a chef, service staff and buy expensive equipment, and pay rentals and heavy deposit.

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Food Plane

Business Concept

Spurred on by the idea that a food establishment does not have to be limited in location, we have come up with a new innovative digital food delivery concept - The Food Plane. In this new concept, food will be prepared in a central kitchen or individual restaurants then packed into a small roaming truck. Customers can make their orders online and collect it when the truck is within their neighborhood collection zone. The concept sketches below show a possible layout design for the delivery truck, where the staff will be belted to the seat, while still able to move along the length with 360 degree movement of seat with adjustable seat height of the railing to heat and pack the food during the journey of food delivery.

Product Journey

  • Food will be prepared in a central kitchen or individual restaurants and packed into the special designed food truck.
  • The food truck will then move to different locations & deliver orders.
  • Customers can submit their orders through an app
  • Order will be accepted only if the truck is in range of a pre-specified distance.
  • The food pilot prepare the order in the truck while the truck is moving towards the delivery location (very similar to the food preparation process in business class flights).
  • Guest will be notified by the app when the truck has reached their designated collection zone (same as when GRAB or UBER arrives at pick up location).
  • Customers can then head down to the designated collection zone (pick-up or drop-off taxi point) to collect their orders.
  • Customers can also add new items on the spot which can be prepared within 5 mins. No cooking will be done inside the truck, likewise the food is stored and served in flights.
  • The central kitchen/ restaurants will get automated system notification as soon as the product inventory inside the van reaches threshold. Accordingly, the kitchen preparation will be handled.
  • In addition to ready-to-eat meals, customers will also be able to order pre-packed and frozen meal kits from the app. Customers will only be required to do some simple preparation in their homes.

Value To Customers

  • Eating their meals fresh and piping hot within minutes between food preparation and consumption. (as opposed to current delivery system which may take up to an hour of travel time for a delivery rider)
  • Ordering a wider range of options like chilled items, drinks by glass, frozen food, etc, which currently is not possible for delivery.
  • Pre-packed and frozen meal kits to give customers an easy option of preparing their own meals, so as to enjoy the cooking experience without any cooking hassles.
  • Adding new items on the spot.

Value TO Business Owner

  • Reducing the cost and manpower of making multiple to and fro delivery trips per order, as well as reduce delivery cost as multiple restaurants can share a delivery truck.
  • Reduce the overheads of food-delivery model by:
        1. High utilization of skilled kitchen staff
        2. Shifting the high delivery margin cost to profitability
        3. Save manpower cost by utilizing the non-peak hours
            - Prepare items to generate revenue during peak hours
            - Deliver raw ingredients to customers, which were procured at wholesale price in your central kitchen and can be sold at retail price, adding extra revenue and without any additional investment.
        4. Sharing the delivery truck
  • Gaining a wider exposure with new customers beyond their immediate area
  • Better cash flow because of immediate payment from customer, while in existing operations with delivery partners, the credit terms are 15~30days.
  • No shortage of riders during lunch and dinner peak hours and rainy days as manpower for delivery will be consolidated into a truck for an area
  • Reducing investment in setting up multiple brick & mortar stores across the island, with operation requiring just 1 central kitchen or existing restaurent for food preparation
  • Eliminating the shortage of skilled manpower with the operation of 1 central kitchen
  • An additional source of revenue from meal kits in addition to the sale of ready-to-eat meals, which can be prepared during off-peak hours.

Value To Delivery Riders

With this new business concept, delivery would have the benefits of:
Contactless collection without riders having to travel to and fro locations for every food delivery, as well as touching the lift buttons, door bells at multiple locations.
Safer and more comfortable working condition. Riders will no longer have to rush to and fro for every order, reducing the chance of road accidents. They would also be sheltered from hot and rainy weather conditions being in a truck.
Opportunity for riders to get Into self-employment with minimum investment

Proposed Business Models

With this new business concept - Food Plane, we would like to propose following possible business models, designed for different level of businesses that can be scaled progressively.

Action Plan

Phase 1: Concept Validation

Pilot run with potential existing customers, leveraging the past 11 years of existence in business across Singapore and a deep understanding of the local sentiments, the key factors can be analyzed as follows:
  • Potential target audience
  • Food habits
  • Feature selection of the application
  • Price point

Phase 2: Testing new customers

In this phase, we will have our beta version, testing with non-existing Cali & Relish customers. The key objective of this phase is to analyze:
  • Optimization of application
  • Food menu optimization
  • Hardware(van) optimization

Phase 3: Implementation

Depending on the reception from the previous phase, we will continue to make refinements to the business model while reaching out to potential partners (delivery & F&B). We will also work out the full front-end and back-end processes and systems for implementation.
  • Sustainability

Phase 4: Scaling-up

Pilot run with potential existing customers, leveraging the past 11 years of existence in business across Singapore and a deep understanding of the local sentiments, the key factors can be analyzed as follows:
  • After running the new concept for a year, we might consider scaling this up to include more partners and expanding it to overseas franchise operations.
  • Creating opportunity in current pandemic situation for the needful.
  • Profitability

Key Project Benefits

  • Sustain the existing four restaurant units In current crisis
  • Building an innovative concept In F&B which is not only the fast growing trend but will become the mandatory part of dining:
        1. Freshly cooked hot food at door-step
        2. Low waiting time
        3. Also serve chilled and frozen items, which is a limitation of current system
        4. No mismatch or missing of items in order
        5. Timely delivery even during bad weather conditions
  • Creating survival options for "impacted businesses" during the current crisis due to COVID 19, by leveraging the existing business setup and retaining manpower.
  • Creating opportunities for self-employment with minimal investment
  • Global franchise-able business model