FSTEC Asia featured two days of tech-focused content from operators and experts from around the world. | Photos by Jonathan Maze.
This is our final dispatch from Singapore, where we spent a week to attend FSTEC Asia, a technology-focused restaurant conference, and FHA-HoRe-Ca, a restaurant exhibition. Both are owned by Restaurant Business parent company Informa.
The events featured a look not just at the future of restaurants in Asia but some insight into the future of restaurants period, as well as some other interesting tidbits. Here are our takeaways from the event.
Floppy disks? Really?
Since David McKillips became the CEO of Chuck E. Cheese in 2020, he’s worked to bring the company into the present. And in some cases the distance he had to bring the company was quite long.
“We were using floppy disks two years ago,” he said.
There were audible gasps from the attendees and those who didn’t gasp probably had no idea what a floppy disk was.
In any event, the technology shift for Chuck E. Cheese has been big. The company that once brought singing animatronic rats to the masses spent a lot of time replacing old technology with new.
For instance, the company used to have a pizza runner, in which an employee would bring the pizza to the table. There was one problem: Customers were usually out playing games. Instead, Chuck E. Cheese replaced that with a pager system so customers could stop playing Mario Kart and get their pizzas.
More Chuck E. Cheese
One problem Chuck E. Cheese has is a lack of loyalty. Customers just do not visit all that often, which historically has limited the chain’s ability to convince customers to return. The typical customer visits one of the chain’s venues 1.5 times per year.
Enter paid loyalty.
Chuck E. Cheese now has 40,000 members in its membership program, which cost as low as $7.99 per month and can provide families with unlimited visits. The program allowed the chain to attach discounts to a visit, which has helped traffic. Of course, the chain has to figure out “how to eat a 50% discount,” McKillips said.
One more interesting piece of information from Chuck E. Cheese: According to McKillips, the average kid asks their parent to go to Chuck E. Cheese 9.5 times before said parent gives in to the request. We have no idea how they compiled that information but as a parent, it checks out.
Ready for growth
Pepper Lunch, a Singapore-based chain, has been spending the past couple of years doing everything it can to get the chain ready for growth under Troy Hooper, CEO of the chain’s U.S. operation.
The company changed its franchising strategy and overhauled its technology. It also looked at exactly where it should put new locations. “We geofenced existing stores in the U.S.,” Hooper said. “We took a four-year look back at our customers, how far they drive, how often they come, where they live and where they work.”
The fast-casual Asian, cook-it-yourself chain then looked at other communities across the U.S. where the demographics were similar and would therefore be receptive to its restaurants.
It also got the word out. “We spent an awful lot of time making an awful lot of noise,” Hooper said.
It’s getting results. The four-unit chain has sold territories in Hawaii, Arizona, Utah, Florida and Southern California and expects to open 30 stores in the next four years.
The Singapore dichotomy
Singapore is apparently one of the most expensive cities in the world and that becomes evident when you visit higher-end restaurants.
But then we visited one of the city’s excellent Hawker Centres, or giant food courts, where the government centralized the street food vendors. They were made famous in the comedy Crazy Rich Asians.
We bought a phenomenal plate of roast chicken and rice. It cost $6 Singaporean dollars, or about $4.55.
Singapore has a fascinatingly diverse restaurant scene.
“We have one of the most diverse food and beverage industries in the world,” Benjamin Boh, managing director of McDonald’s Singapore, said at FSTEC Asia. “We have good $3 meals and very good $500 meals. But people who can afford $500 meals also seek out $3 meals in the Hawker Centres.”
The diversity of its restaurant scene is demonstrated in the frequency with which people in the country dine out. Nearly 80% told Restaurant Business sister company Technomic that they have eaten out in the past week, compared with an average of 69% globally.
And Asian restaurants keep growing. Restaurant sales in Asia grew 10% last year, compared with an average of 5% to 6% in other parts of the world, said Technomic Senior Principal David Henkes.
Part of the ecosystem
Boh and Loh Lik Peng, director of the Singapore-based hotel and restaurant operator Unlisted Corp., noted the importance of being “part of the ecosystem” in Asia. Or, in other words, be where the customers want you to be.
“When you’re not part of the ecosystem, that’s where you can be left behind very quickly,” Boh said.
Specifically, they mentioned the app Xiaohongshu, or the Little Red Book. It’s a social media shopping platform with some 450 million users that enable Chinese consumers to research and recommend all kinds of brands.
“It’s much more ingrained and profoundly deep in consumer behavior than any app that I’ve seen,” Peng said. While the app doesn’t work for everybody, they said, it can be the difference between success and failure.
But they also mentioned that it’s the type of app that is lacking in the U.S., despite years of intense social media development. “Google should have done this,” Peng said. They believe the company that does ultimately develop a platform like that in the U.S. will be a new one.
“The people that do it will be challenger brands because there’s no boundary they’re kept do,” Boh said. “There’s no red tape saying they can’t do this.”
The digital ledge
One of the more innovative pieces of technology we’ve seen was called the “digital ledge” and was at a restaurant called “Salad Stop,” which founder Adrien Daisballets likened to Sweetgreen. It’s a counter-service salad and smoothie brand where consumers can customize their orders.
Counter service concepts where restaurants prepare orders in front of customers have largely remained the same forever, at least at the point of service. But that process can be confusing for customers, which can slow service.
Salad Stop developed an innovative idea that places a digital menu board between the customer and the counter. The ledge allows customers to see more clearly the choices right in front of them, so they can decide what to include with their salads.
“When you’re ordering used to be an intimidating experience,” Daisballets said. “How you order and how you start has been difficult.”
The digital ledge is just in front of the prep counter.
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