Nowadays, we can start a foodservice business with as minimum capital as possible. The main investment will be our creativity and our relations. One of the hippest ways to open a culinary business is opening a pop up booth in a food festival. It offers benefits as high as the permanent restaurant, but without the high opening cost. With eliminating a lot of spending, we have chances to serve gourmet food to customers.
In Indonesia, pop up booth comes with a minimum space. Generally, they are available from 2x2 meters squares to 4x4 meters squares. With this space, we have to think about the equipment setting to avoid mistakes in the workflow.
Many successful pop up culinary business famous for their one particular product. They usually sell one kind of main dishes with varieties only in topping, sauce, or different cooking techniques. Ut is actually a great way to maintain the quality of food in easier way.
This will also save your money by reducing food waste in a small kitchen.
The way to maximize the kitchen is thinking about the equipment choice and placements.
“Basically, a pop up booth requires almost the same equipment as the permanent kitchen,” said celebrity chef Chandra Yudasswara.
“However, there are many limitations. As it is not a permanent booth, we have to use portable equipments. We obviously cannot install gas line. We also have to deal with limited water line,” said Chandra in Frisian Flag pop-up booth in a mall in Jakarta.
FrisianFlag booth used portable equipments
For Chandra, the solution is to find the menu choice suitable for this kind of kitchen. For him, he prefers to choice food that can be cooked with stove rather than with oven.
“It will be nice and easier if we can cook food in a central kitchen first and store it in a food warmer,” said Chandra.
Training the crews to do their work very fast and effective is also an important task to do for a pop up business owner. They have to be trained to do the work in the ambiance of outdoor food festival.
“They also have to understand about the technical aspects of loading and unloading equipments and ingredients in the pop up booth,” said Irena, a co-owner of Britatoes British Potatoes.
“Although this is not a permanent restaurant, we have to use decent foodservice equipment for its durability. We have to be careful in handling them as we have to constantly move from one place to another,” said her.
In a festival, Irena stated that minimal crew required for Britatoes booth is 4 persons.
“Basically, the training and requirements for staff is almost the same as in the food truck. Not only able to work flexibly, the crew must adapt to work in a small space,” said Irena.
Text and Picture: Dina Vionetta
Tags: pop-up business, setting up equipmeny, maximizing space