The quick food delivery space is witnessing intensifying competition with players like Zomato, Swiggy, Zepto, all putting in their best foot forward to have an edge over the other. The most recent in this race is Zomato-owned Blinkit launching ‘Bistro’, a 10-minute food delivery app. Bistro opens up a wide range of use cases that were hitherto not getting adequately addressed through Zomato’s own food delivery app.
Blinkit released Bistro on the Google Play Store platform on December 6, 2024 with plans for roll-out on Apple’s iOS soon. It aims to provide “snacks, meals and beverages delivered in just 10 minutes”. The announcement came only a day after Zepto said it is launching a separate app for Zepto Cafe, driven by the success of that unit.
What is Bistro?
Zomato’s wholly owned subsidiary Blink Commerce Private Ltd recently launched a new app called Bistro that offers delivery within 10 minutes of convenience food items across hot & cold beverages, shakes & juices, snacks & fast food, value meals and deserts, amongst others. The app offers low-ticket value fresh meals from self operated kitchens. The offering, said JM Financial, seems to be broadly similar to Zepto Café, which per media reports, recently crossed 30k order per day despite limited operations. However, there are a few operational differences such as: a) Bistro kitchens are being operated in locations different from Blinkit dark stores, and b) food selection is limited to instant foods but includes Zomato Everyday meal offerings. While the Bistro service is currently available only in Gurgaon, it may soon be expanded to high density micro markets in Tier 1 cities.
Was there a genuine need for Bistro? According to an analysis report by JM Financial, Even as Zomato’s primary food delivery app aggregates food supply from a wide range of organised restaurant partners, however, despite several attempts in the past, the aggregator was finding it difficult to penetrate food consumption happening in canteens or unorganised food stalls/outlets. This, it added, was because of limitations around selection, price points or delivery timelines in an organised set-up.
These limitations meant opportunity loss for the firm from the point of view of food delivery platforms because unorganised channels accounts for more than 50 per cent of out-of-home food spends in the country. And through Bistro, Zomato intends to tap into use cases that were hitherto not getting addressed on its primary food delivery service app, JM Financial maintained.
Who is the competition?
Is Bistro competing against Swiggy’s Bolt or Zepto Cafe? According to analysts at JM Financial, Bistro’s offerings are currently tailormade for it to compete with Zepto Café rather than Swiggy’s Bolt or Zomato’s own 15 mins food delivery offerings, thereby reducing chances of conflict of interest claims by third-party restaurant partners. Moreover, since Bistro will deliver food from self-operated kitchens, the platform would have significantly better control over quality of ingredients used in food preparation, hygiene conditions in the kitchen and end delivery timelines, which should help improve customer experience and their ordering frequencies.
JM Financial concluded, “While we await more details before baking in the impact of Bistro’s launch in our model, this could help Zomato better penetrate the small ticket food consumption space in India.”