Ola Foods talks about safety and hygiene in new spot

We spoke to Anshul Khandelwal, marketing head - category and revenue, Ola Foods, on the brand's advertising strategies.

In times like these, when there's so much panic around the spread of Coronavirus, brands across categories are going the extra mile to ensure the safety of their products. Ola Foods, which hasn't advertised in the past, has has released an advisory that highlights safety and the precautionary measures taken by the brand.

In its latest communication 'Eat safe, stay safe!', the food service arm of Ola highlights the safety and hygiene measures taken by the brand while preparing and delivering food. The over two-minute-long film has been ideated and executed by the brand’s in-house team.

Ola Foods has been functional since September 2019. And since then, its communication was primarily driven by OOH and food sampling/trials.

From burnt toast to bland khichdis, everyone’s got a recipe for disaster! Confess your cooking fails in the comments below.#CoronavirusLockdown #StayHomeStaySafe #CookingFails #Khichdi pic.twitter.com/r9WaHbbMVQ

— Khichdi Experiment (@Khichdi_Exp) March 29, 2020

Let’s have a big round of applause for them 👏👏👏#JantaCurfew #Coronavirus #KitchenCrew #KhichdiExperiment #OlaFoods pic.twitter.com/yUctOkYTMK

— Khichdi Experiment (@Khichdi_Exp) March 22, 2020

Talking about the campaign, Pranay Jivrajka, CEO, Ola Foods, says, “We follow stringent measures and quality checks across all our brands to deliver the best quality food to our customers. We have further enhanced our practices and mandated our kitchen staff to wear masks, head caps and gloves, along with sanitising their hands every 30 minutes. We have also ensured the kitchens are sanitised and deep cleaned more frequently, and the delivery executives are thermally screened and hand-sanitised before they pick up every order.”

A post put out by the brand read, “We have enforced a slew of measures to ensure that every dish we prepare at our kitchens is fresh, healthy and safe. These measures ensure the food that is reaching to consumers is absolutely safe for consumption.”

We spoke to Anshul Khandelwal, head of marketing, category and revenue, Ola Foods, on the brand’s advertising and marketing strategies.

Currently, Ola Foods has three brands under its umbrella, namely, the Khichdi Experiment, Paratha Experiment and Bowlsome. “Through these, our aim is to provide wholesome, healthy and exciting meals to our customers. We are also working towards expanding our portfolio and the way forward is to create enriching, wholesome food experiences across multiple categories, and become an exemplary food brand,” says Khandelwal.

The service, for now, is active in six cities - Bengaluru, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Delhi and Chennai, with over 40 kitchens. Khandelwal tells us that the brand plans to extend its footprint across these cities to over 100 kitchens by the end of 2020.

The brand has launched its first offline store in Bengaluru and is experimenting with different retail models, including a corporate kiosk, presence in malls, food trucks, etc., to ensure it reaches a wider base of consumers.

Speaking of communication with the audience, Khandelwal says, “We follow an omnichannel distribution network and our brands are available on Swiggy and Zomato.”

“The communication for our food brands includes platform-driven communication on Swiggy and Zomato, articles in the media, and brand-driven communication through outdoor hoardings. We also engage in extensive influencer marketing strategy and have conversations of our brand amplified across social media platforms. Finally, we also conduct regular on-ground trials and sampling to spread the word about our brands,” he adds.

Currently, all the creatives of the brand are being designed in-house, however, Khandelwal tells us that Ola Foods is looking at onboarding an agency shortly.