Design recipes for delivery.

You won’t be able to win people over with atmosphere or great service. Recipes are the foundation of virtual kitchen success and since every meal will travel a couple of miles on the back of a bike, you’d better develop recipes that travel well.

Less is more.

Create a short menu of great dishes. Mission Saigon offers a choice of six starters/sides, two types of noodle bowl with a choice of tofu, prawn, beef or chicken, and a few drinks and desserts. This has its benefits: training new staff, sourcing and storage are all easier, mise en place takes less time. Plus, we can be confident that every dish is kickass.

Branding is more important than ever.

Virtual kitchens live digitally. Not only does your kitchen probably not have a shopfront to lure in punters, but you’re selling food exclusively via apps and the internet, so your brand better look good online. We developed Mission Saigon’s look and feel with the help of a French-Vietnamese chef Mak Lam and a fantastic branding agency, and got feedback from the Vietnamese community in Paris to make sure it felt like the real deal.

 Look after your staff.

Mission Saigon has many kitchens dotted across London, Brighton, Paris and Madrid. To maintain top service, the team in every kitchen needs to feel motivated, supported and a part of the larger business. Just because customers don’t come to our kitchens, doesn’t mean the teams working there need to feel forgotten. We train each Mission Saigon chef for 20 hours, give them Taster tees and caps, feature them on our social channels and have chat groups open 24/7 for easy communication.

Test and learn.

One great thing about virtual kitchens is how adaptable they can be. To keep ahead of the game, listen to your customers, update your menu based on feedback, and keep your eyes open for new locations, trending cuisines and other opportunities

This article was first published in Courier Issue 34, April/May 2020. To purchase the issue or become a subscriber, head to our webshop.