Crave Worthy

Kravers Canteen is making waves in the local F&B scene. Here we talk to two of its founders

- Isabel Martel Francisco

Launched in 2020, Kravers Canteen is now one of the country’s major cloud kitchen operations. Founded by food industry veteran Eric Thomas Dee, e-commerce authority Victor Lim and finance specialist Victor Mapua, Kravers currently has six kitchens that serve customers across Metro Manila. With a team of seasoned investors and industry leaders like Chris Po, Lance Gokongwei, Brian Cu and Paulo Campos backing the concept, Kravers Canteen is undoubtedly poised for success.

The Philippine dining scene was bustling pre-pandemic and although the industry took a hit over the last year, innovation and entrepreneurship ran wild. The cloud kitchen business model is one that was prevalent in other countries but had only made its eye-catching entry into the Philippine scene, thanks to the pandemic’s harsh effects on the local F&B ecosystem. With minimal overhead costs and no dine-in service, cloud kitchens can spend time perfecting delivery, customer service, branding and R&D.

However, the road to establishing a new business and operations model does come with its challenges. “In general, I think the most complicated part of any industry’s evolution is customer adoption. Most of the time, when something brilliant and new enters the market, even if the product is good, mass adoption is very difficult because people naturally resist change. Creating customer behaviour is extremely difficult, but once you achieve this, it’s not easy to unchange it either,” says Lim.