10-minute food delivery war to heat up with Zepto’s standalone café app

MUMBAI: Instant delivery is the new way of life. After grocery and a host of other non-grocery household supplies, 10-minute delivery is fast becoming a fad in the food space. Taking competition directly to the doors of Zomato and Swiggy, Zepto is launching a separate app for quicker deliveries of food, branded as Zepto Café, allowing consumers to get chai, samosa and pizza delivered to their doorstep in 10 minutes. Indians are familiar with 30-minute delivery of certain food items like pizzas but with quick commerce changing the way people consume and transact, consumers are taking to rapid delivery of food and players like Zepto and Swiggy are trying to capitalise on the trend. “For consumers looking to get food in 10 minutes, it doesn’t matter if the food is coming from Zepto Café or Zomato. For them, Zepto Café is also now an option for ordering their sandwich and samosa. Zepto is playing on the strength of 10-minute delivery. Competition in the food delivery space will increase—ultimately, the money that will be spent on Zepto café will come from the wallet of a Zomato or Swiggy customer,” Satish Meena, advisor at Datum Intelligence told TOI. Zepto competes with Zomato’s Blinkit and Swiggy Instamart in the broader quick commerce market.
Until now, consumers could only order café products through the main Zepto app; that option will continue to be available. To be sure, Zepto does not follow a food aggregator model or partner with restaurant brands unlike Zomato and Swiggy. It sources ingredients and ready to eat food items from local vendors and uses a network of kitchens stationed within its dark stores to cook and heat up the products before deliveries. Currently, it offers only a select menu but plans are afoot to broaden it going ahead. “We have speed ovens and coffee machines within our kitchens. It takes us less than two minutes to cook everything in the menu,” a company spokesperson said. In October, Swiggy had launched its 10-minute food delivery offering Bolt; Zomato currently delivers everyday (home made) meals in 15 minutes although industry experts said that the company may also look to push a 10-minute offering into the market soon. Analysts do not completely rule out the possibility of Zepto considering partnering with restaurant brands and offering full-fledged food delivery service like Zomato and Swiggy sometime going ahead. “If the Zepto Café app works, they always have the option of expanding into broader food delivery. Once Zepto Cafe gets customer traffic, restaurants will also be keen on joining them,” said Meena.
Zepto Café operates across 15% of the quick commerce firm’s 600 odd dark stores and is limited to six cities as of now but with the separate app going live next week, the plan is to scale up the offering to cover all dark stores and cities where Zepto operates. “There is a significant consumer top-of-mind advantage to a separate app and we are seeing the economics work standalone. So, a standalone app makes sense,” said Aadit Palicha, co-founder and CEO at Zepto which claims that its café offering sees 30,000 orders per day.