In an exclusive interview with OERLive Leaderspeak, Hisham Hasan, CEO and Co-founder of IO Kitchens (iOK), Oman’s first leading Cloud Kitchen operations and Food Tech Company, discusses about future expansion, sustainability and boosting the local SME presence in the country.

Tell us about your journey. How did IO Kitchens become a concept? 

IO kitchen was conceptualised in early 2020, just before the pandemic, and it is the first Omani cloud kitchen platform that cooks and delivers meals on behalf of F&B brands to help them expand their geographical footprint and delivery reach across Muscat. We enable these brands to scale more efficiently and cost-effectively, so they do not need to make significant investments towards infrastructure, resources and technology. We manage the entire lifecycle of the restaurant operations, with a strong focus on quality, consistency, safety, cost efficiency and customer service so that our partner F&B brands can focus on what they do best – their product development and marketing.

Food delivery has been growing steadily over the years, but at the beginning of the pandemic, we saw a quick and significant shift in consumer behaviour and market trends as people preferred home delivery options to dine-in, especially as they were staying in or working from home. As a result, we have successfully built strong partnerships with multiple homegrown and established Omani F&B brands who were looking to transition to a delivery-only model quickly and efficiently to cater to this new trend. We have also collaborated with regional and international F&B brands who were keen to enter Oman’s market without setting up an elaborate brick and mortar business initially.

How is your company giving back to the community? Could you tell us a bit about your support for SMEs and Registered Home Businesses?

There are several key factors that are core to the IO Kitchen’s business model and ethos when it comes to giving back to the community.

Firstly, we have strategically partnered with a leading local training institute: The National Hospitality Institute – NHI, to help us identify Omani talent who are looking to build a career in the F&B industry and that want to work in an innovative cloud kitchen setting. We work very closely with the institute to hone their skill-sets through our customised training and mentoring program under the supervision of our team of culinary experts.

Secondly, as part of our core objectives, we are committed to working with homegrown/micro SMEs and brands, and have carefully selected brands that we believe have the potential to grow into great local brands. We set them up and operate them as virtual brands from our kitchen, which has allowed multiple local brands to achieve their growth potential in a much shorter period. We look forward to working with more local brands and growing them into bigger concepts that could extend beyond Oman in the near future.

Lastly, we are committed to collaborating with local SMEs, wherever possible, to source our produce, and we look forward to building on the foundations we have put in place to continue to support the growth of the ecosystem.

As a Foodtech company bringing in a new concept to the FMCG industry in Oman, could you elaborate on the future of IO Kitchens?

Cloud Kitchens, Dark Kitchens, Ghost Kitchens, whatever you want to refer to them as, are the future of the F&B industry. It is a multibillion-dollar industry just in the GCC region alone. Our vision is to grow our network, reach, and the brands we work with beyond Oman, and to be a strongly established cloud kitchen that competes regionally and internationally, positioning Oman as a key player in this fast growing industry.

What are the challenges you face in terms of competition with other eateries when dine-in culture is still prevalent in Oman? How do you cover up this particular obstacle?

I think our concept complements rather than competes with dine-in eateries, in that we are able to expand our brands’ reach, network and growth potential faster than a brick and mortar model. Our strengths lie in our ability to enhance operational efficiencies for our partner brands through the use of data analytics and the tech stack we have developed in-house.

While dine-in concepts focus primarily on the dine-in experience, our main objective is to deliver quality food in the shortest time frame consistently. The dine-in culture will always exist, but we have seen a major shift in consumer behaviour over the last few years where customers prefer instant, convenient, and a variety of dining options at their fingertips.

The hand-in-hand growth in number of food aggregators operating locally and internationally has accelerated this shift and made it even easier for customers to access their favourite brands.

Lastly, given that Oman thrives to be a sustainable economy as part of the Oman Vision 2040, could you tell us about the sustainable initiatives taken by you ? How are you doing your bit for a greener environment? 

In our industry, there are plenty of opportunities for us to do our part in driving a sustainable business. One of the biggest areas of waste in our industry is food packaging. We recognise this, and therefore have taken steps to the make packaging, wherever possible, sustainable. Be it from recycled, renewable material or at the very least bio-degradable packaging.

We also minimize our kitchen waste by using the data we have to forecast food consumption and ordering cycles. In addition, instead of disposing of the cooking oil we use, we have partnered with a local Omani start up ‘Wakud’ to convert it into bio-diesel fuel.

As mentioned earlier, we work with local SMEs to source our produce to minimize our dependency on imported products and reduce our carbon footprint. These are just a few examples of the initiatives we have introduced to make our business more sustainable.

IO Kitchen has also recently signed a partnership agreement with Kreative Restaurants & CO (KR&CO) from the UAE. KR & CO will use IO Kitchens smart kitchen operations and innovative technology stack to accelerate KR&CO’s reach across Oman. The partnership will see the introduction of eleven regionally leading healthy food concepts to Oman, that are inspired by sustainable, fresh and high-quality ingredients, creating a variety for customers to choose from through various local food aggregators”

IO Kitchen currently operates over 22 local and regional brands including Rice N’ Roll, Ubhar Express, MunchZilla, Rice N’ Spice, Just Khao Suey, Big Bao Buns, Egg Story, Wok Stars, Mix N’ Munch, My Pasta and many others. These brands are currently available for delivery on Talabat, Akeed and TM Done