Cooklab Selling Ready-to-Cook Foods Through Digital Applications

Despite the growth of the grocery provider platform "ready to cook" had experienced a decrease in quantity over the last few years, but that did not dampen the interest of startup activists to provide similar services.

Name Black Garlic was familiar a few years ago among culinary lovers, but now the platform is no longer operating. BerryKitchen which also offers similar services and catering online since 2012, then acquired by Yummy Corp in 2019. Now a new startup trying to play there, its name is Cooklab.

To dailysocial, Kartika Baswara (co-founder) explained, the Cooklab platform which he and his partner, Clarence Eldy, founded, has a business model that lies in selling cooking packages through the channel. E-commerce and applications. Cooking packages that are sold include ingredients according to the dose, card menu, as well as recipe videos. In the future, they would like to explore opportunities to collaborate with local cooking ingredient providers, to create collaborative menus.

"I and businesses have started a business in the field of fresh product since October 2019. At that time, we supplied vegetables and fruit to restaurants and cafes in Bali. All sourcingWe got it from local farmers, and until finally in March 2020, we managed to work together with more than 10 restaurants and 150 farmers as partners," said Kartika.

The pandemic and its impact on business

During a pandemic, Cooklab then begin to launch strategic actions by carrying out pivot. Realizing that they could not continue to supply to restaurants as usual due to the effects of the pandemic, they then saw the trend of cooking at home which had increased considerably during the self-quarantine period.

"We think that it will be very easy, if people want to cook but all needs are already in one package. Because it is according to the dose, so there is nothing left. From there, we started to open a branch in Surabaya in August, and expand to Jakarta in October. Cooklab itself has its head office in Jakarta," said Kartika.

This step turned out to give positive results. He claims that he is currently experiencing very rapid business growth in Surabaya. One of the reasons is that not many players (digital F&B startups) have entered the Surabaya market. So the people there are interested in trying.

"Interestingly at that time, our Instagram DMs were quite full of Jakartans who also wanted to try. Because of this, we decided to open a branch in Jakarta earlier than the original plan, namely January 2021," said Kartika.

For customers in Surabaya, there are around 85 users who have tried Cooklab products for the last 2 months. Meanwhile, for Jakarta, because it has not been launched, it is still only about friends and family of customers. Each Cooklab user takes notes, usually between 2-3 orders. Around 220 cooking packages have been sold in Surabaya.

Fundraising plan

Asked what distinguishes Cooklab from other similar players, Kartika emphasized that Cooklab provides cooking packages that are in accordance with the dose so that users can cook without any waste. Cooklab also has cooking videos demoed by professional cooks.

Currently they are still trying to focus on "survival mode" or outsmart so the business can survive. In addition to successful expansion, the next target is to start fundraising activities in mid-November 2020.

"Obviously we feel that more people are cautious in investing, and that's natural. However, we remain optimistic that we can close fundraising at the end of January 2021 as seed round us," Kartika said.