Ten-minute food delivery is the delivery of freshly cooked food within about ten minutes of ordering, from small kitchens close to the customers. It applies the ten-minute promise of quick commerce to cooked meals.
The problem is simple. Most dishes cannot be cooked from raw in ten minutes, and the ride alone takes five or six. So the kitchen must cook most of the food before anyone orders it. This works only if the kitchen can predict what will be ordered, in which quantity, in each half hour.
A ten-minute kitchen is built for this. It serves only homes and offices within about 2 km, much like a dark store for cooked food. Its menu is short, and every dish is designed to be finished in two or three minutes. The slow parts, such as cooking rice, making gravies and grinding batter, are done in batches before each meal time. When an order arrives, the cook only heats, assembles and packs it. Riders wait at the kitchen, so no time is lost in sending one.
Imagine a kitchen in Noida that serves offices within 2 km. Its model forecasts 60 bowls of rajma chawal between 1 and 2 p.m. on a weekday. The forecast comes from the same hour on the same weekday over the past four weeks, and from the weather. At 12:15, the cooks prepare rice and rajma for 65 bowls, a little more than the forecast. At 1:07, an office worker orders one bowl. A cook fills and seals it in 90 seconds. The rider leaves at 1:09 and reaches the office reception at 1:16, nine minutes after the order. By 2 p.m., the kitchen has sold 58 bowls.
The forecast decides whether the kitchen earns money. If it cooks too much, the 7 bowls left at the end of the hour cannot be held safely for long, and are thrown away. If it cooks too little, the dish shows as sold out and the orders go elsewhere. So the whole business rests on demand forecasting, hour by hour and dish by dish.
How is this different from a cloud kitchen? A cloud kitchen cooks each dish after the order arrives, serves a wider area and delivers in about 30 minutes. A ten-minute kitchen cooks before the order, serves a small area and delivers in about ten. The ten-minute promise also depends on delivery time prediction and on route optimisation software that keeps a rider ready at the kitchen.