Coronavirus and the subsequent lockdown is now impacting businesses all across the world, and the magnitude of this change is unprecedented.
It’s altering business models, forcing them to diversify and adapt on an unimaginable scale.
In order to survive, and thrive, MakeMyTrip and Oyo Rooms have now decided to deliver food. However, there is a catch here.
MakeMyTrip Will Deliver Food
The catch is that, MakeMyTrip will only deliver food from 5-star hotels to their users.
MakeMyTrip (MMT) has partnered with Roseate and JW Marriott, both of which are premium 5-star hotels. For JW Marriott, this is indeed surprising, since few days back, they partnered with Swiggy under “Marriott on Wheels” program.
Deepak Tuli, Chief Business Officer, Emerging Businesses at MakeMyTrip said, “As the world adopts life-altering measures to adjust to the new order, customers are seeking options that can help them with familiar experiences in a safe and hygienic environment. Our new online gourmet delivery initiative is a step towards ensuring that food-lovers continue to enjoy their in-city fine-dining experiences by bringing their eating-out adventures to their homes,”
MakeMyTrip is a leading travel portal from India, but due to the lockdown, their business is severely impacted.
Now, they are hoping that by delivering food orders, they can trigger a change, and use their network and reach to sustain revenues.
Oyo Rooms Will Also Deliver Food?
As per MoneyControl, Oyo Rooms is now all set to deliver food orders.
However, the catch is that, they will only deliver ready-to-serve foods, or frozen foods.
No training is required, and the staff just needs to warn the food, and get it delivered.
An unnamed source said, “OYO has realised that cooking meals and maintaining its consistency where the kitchen service is not good is very difficult. Therefore, it is planning to further explore the scope in the ready-to-eat category. At some point, the company also had plans to set up its own factory to produce and store frozen food. But that has been shelved now and for the time being it is relying only on third party manufacturers.”
Oyo had launched their Cloud kitchen services last year, wherein they delivered their own cooked food to the Oyo guests and to outsiders as well. They had launched several brands under their Cloud kitchen initiatives such as Adraq, O’Biryani, Master of Momos and Parantha Pundit.
However, since most of the hotels are closed, they had to suspend their Cloud kitchen activities. But Oyo maintains that most of these brands are still operations, albeit at a smaller scale. Oyo said, “We would like to clarify that we continue to operate all our brands that were launched under OYO cloud kitchen. Unfortunately, owing to the current COVID-19 pandemic, these brands are temporarily suspended as they operated from the kitchens located in our hotels.”
We have received no confirmation about this news. We will keep you updated, as more details come in.