E-catering businesses in India are very busy serving food and satiating the hunger of millions. The business is gaining popularity and importance amongst the people. The food industry has captured a giant space in the business world. However, the E-catering business may require a significant investment to get the market space. What makes your E-catering business successful is the innovative idea and excellent planning.
There are challenges to sustain in any business, which could not be possible without proper planning. The knowledge of identifying your potential customers and competitors is the mantra to stand in the business world. E-catering service in India has become a massive platform to provide the facilities of online food in train. Many brands are ruling the industry with excellent quality food service on board. But, it takes a lot of effort and hard work to run your business successfully and make a profit.
E-Catering: The Successful Story of Food Delivery in Train
Many successful e-catering brands help learn impressive business ideas to maintain dignity in the market. Now the question you come across every day is why the e-catering business in India has become popular? Although the answer is quite simple, it realizes the needs of people for quality food on the train.
People prefer train journeys in India. It is both affordable and comfortable. Passengers love to taste different kinds of food during the journey. When e-catering was not launched, they had to buy food from unauthorized vendors. These foods are prepared in unhygienic condition that badly affects people’s health who consumes them. However, Indian Railways have found a good solution for the passengers and expanded the e-catering services by delivering online food on trains. Currently, RailRestro is the most loved and trusted E-catering provider that offers great meals on wheels.
From Start-up to Becoming a Brand
Think, how do businesses become successful? How does it seek the attention of potential customers? Why do people prefer a particular brand? There are many points businesses need to understand to run successfully and make a profit. This rule also applies to the e-catering business market. Your competitors continuously focus on increasing their customers. It doesn’t matter how many service providers are there; what matters is why any particular brand is becoming more popular than others and how they take place in the list of top service providers?
Here are the eight important things to learn from the successful E-catering brands before starting your business:
- Developing a Proper Business Plan
Keep a bird’s eye view of the business model of successful brands. Learn how they plan their business and its execution. In most cases, these e-catering brands have outstanding ideas that work effectively. Imagine why popular food chains have gained massive popularity in a short period? Because they have a fixed agenda of reaching people exactly the way they have planned. Any business starts with the risk of bearing losses, but they also have a motto of earning double their investment amount.
Example: RailRestro, the leading e-catering partner of IRCTC, has set an agenda of serving food to at least 500 passengers in a day. It is required for the company to reach the goal and do the business as it is planned. To achieve this, the company put all its effort and worked on many factors that involve marketing, branding, food quality, food in train app, service timing, etc. Its motive of spicing up the journey is working, and passengers prefer this brand satisfactorily.
- Decide your Source of Finance
Before starting any company or start-up, capital plays an important role. Arrangement of finances generally becomes a barrier in executing any business plan or idea. Therefore, a fresher entrepreneur must choose the source of finance smartly. You can find many investors available in the market to invest in impressive ideas. One can also arrange finances through bank loans and government start-up funds. Presently, a reality show, “Shark Tank”, is telecasted where the top personalities from the massive business world are investing in exclusive ideas from the country.
Successful brands pick their investors wisely and invest money properly while executing their business plans. They take care of every small expense and keep the record for further. And all the successful entrepreneurs agree on the fundamental rule – time management.
- Quality matters more than quantity
The food business mostly looks for quality instead of maintaining quantity. Everyone likes healthy and hygienic food instead of the one that can cause health problems. Highly recommended brands are admired because they properly take care of the passenger’s taste buds and health. Also, businesses in the food industry need to follow the guidelines of FSSAI, which is the highest regulatory body for food quality and standards in India. Successful businesses work on providing quality instead of quantity and take care of affordable pricing.
- Hygiene Care during Food Preparation
Renowned brands always bother about their market reputation. These businesses can’t compromise their market prestige. They quickly figure out their mistakes to avoid spoiling their brand reputation. Hygiene plays a crucial role if involved in the food catering business. People have become more conscious about their eating habits. Hence, they choose healthy food cooked hygienically. Esteemed e-catering companies look after this cautiously and serve quality food.
- Marketing and PR Strategie
The success of a brand depends on its marketing and advertising strategies. Successful brands have creative ideas to sell their services. They promote their products and services differently. Currently, social media and online platforms are the one stop solution to establish a brand name in the market. The presence of celebrities and famous personalities makes the advertisement stronger, and it is beneficial to sell any business services. If you have noticed, famous ads and big film personalities are featured to show how the service is important. They easily influence the customers to use the particular brand or switch from the previous brand to the new one. Websites and Google ads are also strong marketing platforms to reach potential customers easily.
- Respect the Time Management
Time is a significant factor. In the e-catering business, timing is more important as food delivery has to be made on the scheduled trains’ arrival and departure times. Passengers can order food 2 hours before the train arrives at the particular station, and the delivery partners are expected to reach the spot before the train arrives. If they fail to reach on time, they can lose one order and, most importantly, lose the customer’s trust. So, E-catering service providers try to fulfil the customer’s requirements on time. Time management in any service is directly proportional to the reputation and success of that business.
- Crisis Management is Important
All Successful businesses have a plan ready to handle the crisis in business. COVID-19 pandemic is a recent example that somehow affected every brand- small or large. Amidst COVID, business was completely shut down, that poorly affected the e-catering market. When the service resumed, companies started working at the same pace to get the same acceptance as before. It took time to gain people’s trust that they were serving quality food with zero contact and hard work always paid off. Travellers have now started ordering food in train, and the companies have again re-established the same brand status in the market. The staffs are fully vaccinated and wear masks and gloves while preparing food. They choose restaurants with good ratings for food delivery. Delivery executives are double dose vaccinated and always wear masks and hand over the food to their customers.
- Use of Digital Technology
In the digital age, you cannot succeed without an online presence of your business with strong and regular communication with your customers. Companies put a strong business interface through the website, apps, and social media channels. These are glamorous and fancy to seek the attention of a huge population at a glance. Apart from this, they utilize SMS for business, Email, podcasts, and online influencers to boost their company and achieve goals.
Example – RailMitra provides many services to train passengers, such as PNR status, live train running status, train time table and many more. It helps passengers get the current status of their 10 digit PNR number to tell whether their ticket has been confirmed or waitlisted. Most important, RailMitra utilizes AI based technology to provide exact PNR prediction that tells train passengers about the confirmation probability of their ticket in waiting or RAC.
Iconic brands have put examples by setting up milestones for their success. Besides many hindrances, these businesses stood on the determination “not to give up” and came out from the barriers. However, many companies could not survive and have closed the business of serving food on track. A few of them have not given up, and now they are the heroes. Despite running away, always learn to face the challenges and difficulties to become a winner.
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