(VOVWORLD) - Have you ever heard of a cloud kitchen? Don’t be fooled by its name. It’s not a food preparation place suspended in the air, but a tech-laden food business model. During the COVID-19 pandemic, cloud kitchens have been finding favor with restaurants in Vietnam. One cloud kitchen is Nom Nom Market. In this edition of Digital Life, Truc Luu –marketing officer for Inn Saigon, which owns Nom Nom Market – will share with us the story of Nom Nom’s success during the pandemic.
A cloud kitchen— sometimes called a “ghost kitchen” or “virtual kitchen”—is a commercial kitchen that provides retail food sellers the facilities and services needed to prepare menu items for delivery and takeout. Unlike traditional brick-and-mortar locations, cloud kitchens allow food businesses to create and deliver food products with minimal overhead.
Nom Nom Market came to life in the middle of 2021 when the pandemic was raging in Ho Chi Minh City. The model, which had been around for a while, was embraced by Nom Nom Market in the hope of improving people’s eating experience, which, as life gets busier, tends to loose its joy.
Truc explained, “The fast pace of life has made eating more function than form, more a daily act of sustenance than a lip-smacking cultural fulfillment and connection between family members. Our ambitious goal is to reverse that by delivering the best dishes in a ‘ready-to-cook’ or ‘ready-to-eat’ format so cooking and cleaning take customers less time, which means they will have more time to enjoy the food, talk, and share about their daily life and work.”
 Nom Nom Market collaborates with partners like Social Local, The Running Bean, and Be An Vegetarian, to offer a wide range of dishes. (Photo: Nom Nom Market) |
Nom Nom was born at a time when social distancing and travel restrictions were being strictly observed in Ho Chi Minh City. Nom Nom members must follow strict Government rules, including compulsory COVID-19 testing every two days, at least one dose of vaccine administered to every staff member, and delivery allowed only from 6am to 9pm. But operating as a cloud kitchen enabled it to thrive. Orders at Nom Nom Market are placed via their website, facebook fanpage, and Instagram account, where its salespersons are online to reply in just minutes. The food is made, packaged, and delivered to customers at their desirable time.
Nom Nom Market offers the favorite dishes of their partners, who are often prestigious local restaurants like Social Local, The Running Bean, and Be An Vegetarian. A wide-ranging menu of great appetizers and main courses, cooked in different styles with unique twists from the chefs, caters to a wide range of tastes. One of Nom Nom’s best-sellers is broken rice with crab paste and salted egg yolks in the shells as a really eye-catching decoration. Another signature dish is Caborana spaghetti with miso soup and sake, Japan’s pantry staples.
 Nom Nom's much loved pasta (Photo: Nom Nom Market) |
Keeping the worries of operating costs at bay allows Nom Nom to focus on its core values: food quality and customer service.
Truc said, “We set the two-Q standard for our food: the quality of our ingredients, which are fresh and high-grade with clear origins, and the quality of our chefs, who have been working for years in the food industry. We also have a very enthusiastic customer service team to respond to customers, package food, plan the delivery schedule, and collect feedback to improve our service.”
 - “The food is great and the packaging is good. I will order more often for my dinner.”
- “I have ordered here several times and have spread the word about Nom Nom Market to my friends.”
“I will order from Nom Nom Market again and again.”
Those are some comments posted on Nom Nom’s Facebook fanpage and other social media accounts. Nom Nom’s Facebook fanpage is the primary platform for customers to reach Nom Nom Market and for Nom Nom Market to advertise its food and earn customers’ trust.
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Photos and videos of the food from when it’s in the kitchen until it’s ready to serve are posted on social media every day. Nom Nom Market’s confidence is commensurate with its professionalism, according to Truc.
"Not many restaurants are confident enough to expose what’s inside their kitchen. Nom Nom Market regularly updates footage of our food in the making. Such culinary videos tell everything about Nom Nom, the food hygiene and the meticulous cooking. No matter where you eat food from Nom Nom Market, the flavors and decorations of the fine-dining style are always there,” Truc said.
Offering food delivery doesn’t mean that cloud kitchens like Nom Nom Market provide only a couple of dishes. A luxurious meal is just a mouse click away. Some other big cloud kitchens in Vietnam are Chef Station, Tasty Kitchen, and Cloud Cook. According to the Singapore Business Review, the cloud kitchen model, which analyzes customer data to figure out what they want, is renovating the food and beverage industry and capitalizing on an irreversible trend in the technology era.