The Restaurant Association of Singapore (RAS) held its inaugural F&B Tech Hackathon 2017 earlier this month at the Singapore Management University, attracting over 70 youths aged 16 to 35 across 18 teams.
Supported by NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute), the event saw participants designing tech-based solutions to solve issues facing the food services industry such as manpower shortage, high rental costs and rising costs of ingredients.
The panel of judges included Timbre Group CEO Edward Chia, SPRING Singapore Assistant Chief Executive Chew Mok Lee and Singtel Business Group Associate Director Sarah Lee.
RAS President Vincent Tan said: “We are excited to see the ideas and prototypes developed, and hope that the F&B industry may leverage this platform to crowdsource ideas and talent, as well as build partnerships with these aspiring young entrepreneurs.
“At the end of the day, we hope that the RAS F&B Tech Hackathon will impact our local F&B scene through the implementation of emerging technologies and open innovation.”
Productivity Improvements
Three prizes were presented: The most functional prototype, the most productivity improvement and the most implementable solution.
The team that won the most productivity improvement prize was Rentra, which came up with a software to decrease the turnover rates in restaurants through better matching of employers’ and jobseekers’ expectations and needs.
Team captain Moses Ong, a 23-year-old user experience designer, said: “We tried to understand the problem better by talking to restaurant owners. That’s how we were able to come up with a solution to tackle the core problem – why turnover rates in restaurants are high.”
He added that the software is viable and can be implemented in the future, but needs more time and effort to validate.
Team MISE won the most implementable solution with its venue sharing software, while team Wiio won the most functional prototype with its virtual assistance software to render the first level of customer service in restaurants.
Each of the three winning teams walked away with $3,000.
Source: NTUC This Week
