Technology has impacted every facet of our country. For the Food and Beverage (F&B) industry, technology has brought about a new and enhanced manner to operate, from the purchasing of raw materials , right down to the customers’ experience.
The rise of order and delivery platforms is also a testament to increasing demands for convenience. As for restaurant owners, these platforms have provided them with additional time to prepare the food in advance, directly increasing table turnover and improving business efficiency.
However, to make the shift into the digital realm, F&B business owners would first need to understand the transitioning process itself for the right solutions to adopt. In order to tackle this issue at hand, Vincent Kok launched eatcosys.
“Before eatcosys, no platform in the market provided a consolidated list of services for the F&B industry. They had to go through multiple channels to address their operational needs, from creating a web page to promoting one’s business on various social media platforms and even consultation on financing and fundraising,” says Vincent.
The Chief Executive Officer hopes to make his platform the go-to platform that provides the F&B industry with solutions encompassing the entire business lifecycle in order to enable them to grow in every aspect.
“The challenge for F&B players is finding which digital solution fits them the best. It requires a deep understanding of their customers. Technology needs to act as a tool that enhances human interaction instead of looking to replace it,” he tells BusinessToday.
Vincent urges businesses to avoid going digital for the sake of joining the digital transformation bandwagon. Instead, he says entrepreneurs need to focus their efforts on improving the customers’ experience across touchpoints throughout the journey.
There are also increasing concerns among smaller businesses when it comes to taking the digital leap due to misconceptions that the shift would be difficult, expensive or pointless.
Helping Businesses Transition
Eatcosys currently provides an ecosystem where their aggregate list on FoodAdvisor, their ingredients bundling services by Bundle Up or even Fidelity Funding, all function to assist F&B entrepreneurs to be seen and help them thrive.
According to Vincent, businesses that rely on a single channel of serving their customers can carry out catering orders via eastcosys and also expand their reach beyond their usual brick-and-mortar boundaries.
He also highlights that it would be challenging to find a business these days without presence on social media. However, there are some existing companies that still rely on traditional methods of promotion.
“We can help these businesses build their online presence by listing in our food discovery platform and even crafting a webpage. Instead of buying raw materials and supplies daily with eastcosys, businesses can also transition into adapting a point of sales (POS) system that integrates with the marketplace, ” Vincent says.
Eatcosys also utilises data through their POS offering. By looking through the revenue and sales generation, the team can know if they can split bundled food ingredients with another F&B operator, or, if it requires funding due to sustaining losses during a difficult time.
Future Plans
Eatcosys recently launched an ECF campaign in collaboration with Fundnel, aiming to expand the company’s reach and range of investors. By the end of July, Vincent and his team raised more than RM5 million.
With these funds, Vincent and his team are aiming to enhance their technology solutions, see investments into companies that are involved in the F&B and retail technology space that complement their ecosystem, and also be used as working capital financing to F&B and retail merchants using their POS solution or online ordering solution.
In the long run, the team hopes to increase the number of merchants they have helped grow to scale up.
The platform is currently serving seven countries, and more than 20,000 retailers across SEA, with Malaysia being the bulk of where their operations are centered. During the lockdown, eatcosys online kitchenware trading units have grown from zero to over RM2 million in just 12 months.
This, Vincent, says is in part due to aggressive marketing as well as consumers being stuck at home and having more time to indulge in cooking at home.
“We are expected to increase our revenue by 67% this year and also foresee that we will only be able to grow our regional business in 2023,” Vincent tells BusinessToday.
