DishServe is the latest innovation to come out of Covid-19. Co-founded by DishServe CEO and former RedDoorz Chief Operating Officer (COO) Rishabh Singhi, former RedDoorz Country Head in the Philippines Stefanie Irma, MagicSpace India Founder Vinav Bhanawat, and PickMe Sri Lanka Co-founder Fathhi Mohammed, DishServe is a three-sided marketplace. It consists of the DishServe platform, restaurant brands, and a network of cloud kitchens.
Brunch spoke to Fathhi Mohammed to learn more about the concept behind DishServe.
DishServe, Mohammed explained, is run by home cooks and is built around these cloud kitchens. The company provides them with training, equipment, and technical assistance. Meanwhile, home cooks adhere to a specific procedure to meet all professional standards and prepare meals using restaurant-branded ingredients. The meals are then delivered to customers via current delivery infrastructures in Indonesia.
Mohammed commented that the DishServe approach is a unique one. Cloud kitchens are typically enormous rooms that occupy an entire building. Businesses can handle both mid-mile (cooking, food processing, production) and last-mile (heating, packaging, delivery) operations from a single location. Mohammed explained that while it may be less expensive than a sit-down restaurant, the high rents connected with these huge locations typically make them expensive to run, adding that in contrast, the methodology taken by DishServe separates these procedures from the equation. “As a result, the firm not only empowers home chefs, but also saves restaurant chains a lot of money.”
These brands have been able to expand their footprint thanks to DishServe’s network of cloud kitchens. It has also enabled them to do more than just adapt to the pandemic. “Through the DishServe platform, many of the restaurant brands we deal with are now witnessing increased sales that have surpassed their pre-Covid numbers,” Mohammed proudly stated.
The team’s focus was absolutely evident right from the start. They made it their mission to help home cooks obtain a stable source of income. With Rishabh offering the strategic vision, and Stefanie looking into operations, Mohammed managed the tech behind the app, and Vinav handled acquisitions and marketing, which saw DishServe begin to thrive as a startup.
Mohammed stated that DishServe’s goal would be to make it easier for home cooks to sell their food online. “We didn’t want to get into delivery, since many apps have already solved the delivery problem in Indonesia. We already knew the complexity of dealing with meal delivery from my experience with PickMe. As a result, we chose to make use of the existing infrastructure.”
We asked Mohammed what challenges they had to face in order to make DishServe a successful operation, to which he responded that since the very first day, there were many challenges they had to overcome. Their biggest challenge was that all four of them were in different locations, himself being in Sri Lanka, Rishabh in New York, Stefanie in Jakarta, and Vinav in Mumbai, which made communicating a bit tough, but with the advanced technology available to us, they made it work.
Through their tireless efforts, Mohammed and the team truly believe that DishServe has made significant progress toward its initial objectives by laying a solid platform for assisting Indonesian home cooks. The company now intends to capitalise on its success by supporting restaurant chains with their expansion plans.
Sharing their next steps, Mohammed stated that they are currently collecting data at the moment, adding that according to the affordability, their network of cloud kitchens has helped restaurants expand to new locations. Once they have the adequate data in hand, they will be able to further help these restaurants to decide on the ideal locations to move to, so they may be able to obtain a sizable financial gain.
We also asked Mohommed if DishServe would be coming to Sri Lanka anytime soon, to which he stated that they don’t have any plans to expand countries until the second quarter of 2022. “Jakarta is the largest city, where people tend to eat out the most. So we want to continue there, find our information, and eventually look into going global,” he concluded.
