Bhavya Kohli, Director, Business Developement and Marketing, Fobsters Hospitality, talks to Juhi Sharma about Kitchen Central, a brand under Fobsters Hospitality, an Indo-American venture, sharing details about the concept.
Tell us about Kitchen Central?
As the name suggests, Kitchen Central is essentially a base kitchen. It provides a series of food solutions that include food delivery, catering, preparing semi-processed food for retail, and turnkey services for any event. Eventually, we plan to make it a back-end kitchen support for our own brand of restaurants and cafes, which we are planning for the near future.
What other facilities do you offer?
Under Kitchen Central, we operate two kitchens in Delhi: one in Sainik Farms and the other in Civil Lines. Both are approximately 1,000 sqft in area and are comparable to kitchens in 5-star hotels, and completely unlike the kitchens or cooking counters of home delivery joints, restaurants and caterers. We have separate facilities for storage: one is in south Delhi and other in north Delhi, for dry as well as frozen food products. Then we have KC Express, which is a budget takeaway and catering division that supplies food to our various KC Express counters.
Please explain your KC Express model.
There is a ‘Do it Yourself Catering’ section at KC Express, which offers customers an option to design their own menus for their upcoming event or party of 20 to 60 people. KC Express sends the food from our base kitchen to the venue, where the chef adds the final touches. Our additional services are not included, so it brings the costs down to suit the budget. Since KC Express is managed through our existing base kitchens, it does not entail any extra cost for us.
What investments have you made?
For setting up a kitchen like ours and sustaining it for six months, on an average requires an investment of Rs 75 lakh to Rs 1 crore. We follow a proper human resource structure like any other organisation. We have marketing and accounts departments, a general manager who oversees all operations, and unit managers on site who are responsible for coordination and running the kitchens. We have 20 chefs on our payrolls, and a head chef.
What’s on your menu?
Kitchen Central has an exhaustive menu ranging from Italian, Mughlai, Chinese,Thai to Fast Food. The fare includes curries, breads, salads, starters as well as light meals and snacks such as sandwiches, kathi rolls, burgers, pizzas, and momos, and menus can be customised by our chefs.
What are your future plans?
We plan to add more kitchens in Delhi and NCR within the next one year, following which we will enter other metros. Going forward, our company aims to have a growth rate of 15 to 20 percent per annum.
