Having a successful business in the F&B industry is notoriously difficult. Before the pandemic, half of the restaurants closed within the first year and 80 per cent within five years.

The COVID-19 pandemic made the food and beverage industry even more competitive, forcing consumers and restaurateurs to adopt online food delivery services as the norm. During and after the pandemic, restaurants that digitised rapidly thrived, whereas many that did not were unable to do so.

With online food delivery reaching 50 per cent of restaurant orders at the peak of the pandemic and stabilising at 25-30 per cent post-pandemic, consumer behaviour has shifted permanently driven by the convenience and choice that online food delivery offers.

Two new F&B business models are expected to reach US$1 trillion by 2030, according to a Euromonitor report, as a result of this shift in consumer behaviour: food delivery, cloud kitchens and virtual restaurants.

Cloud kitchens vs virtual restaurants

Cloud kitchens are delivery-only kitchens that can operate multiple restaurant brands from a single location. They can operate their own proprietary brands or licence third-party brands from companies like TiffinLabs.

The cloud kitchen business model aims to disrupt the traditional retail real estate industry, similar to WeWork disrupting commercial real estate, by offering F&B entrepreneurs an option to expand with lower cost and easily accessible kitchens.

Virtual restaurants are very different. These restaurant brands exist primarily online and are ordered through channels such as GrabFood, Foodpanda and Deliveroo.

Multiple virtual restaurant brands can be operated by a single kitchen (both cloud kitchens and traditional brick-and-mortar restaurants can operate virtual restaurant brands) as the menus are designed to be easy to cook and compatible with existing equipment available in the majority of restaurants.

This enables traditional brick-and-mortar restaurants to diversify their digital revenue streams from their own physical brand to two-five additional virtual brands online.

For example, one of our kitchen partners, an Indian restaurant in Singapore, operates three TiffinLabs virtual brands online to reach more customers: Phat Fingers Korean Fried Chicken, Southern Soul Nashville Fried Chicken, and Pasta Table Italian Pasta.

How does virtual restaurant brand licensing work?

The set-up for virtual restaurant brands is truly plug and play to existing restaurant operations. It is fast, low cost and low effort. When our kitchen partners sign up with us, they can start generating sales in just two weeks.

Our team assists them in training and ordering inventory. Orders are generated by our digital sales and marketing initiatives to amplify brand presence with zero effort by the restaurants.

Also Read: Why continuity plans for F&B businesses is a must

Restaurants can typically expect their total revenue to increase by 30-50 per cent through a three-four times delivery revenue uplift from TiffinLabs virtual restaurant brands within four-eight weeks.

Tribeca, one of our traditional brick-and-mortar restaurant partners, which started operations two months before the pandemic, was able to generate enough profits from our virtual restaurant brands to cover their fixed labour and rental costs despite no dine-in revenues.

Role of virtual restaurant brands in the Southeast Asia F&B ecosystem

With one out of four dollars spent for food service in Southeast Asia coming from off-premise online food delivery, we believe that virtual restaurant brands will play a critical role in the diversity and sustainability of the F&B industry.

While traditional brick-and-mortar restaurants take time to grow their customer base, they can rapidly tap into proven virtual restaurant brands from companies like TiffinLabs to generate a steady income and profit stream.

We envision a future where every brick-and-mortar restaurant incorporates multiple proven virtual restaurant brands into its operations as part of its omnichannel strategy to capture online delivery consumers seeking convenience and choice in their catchment area.

On another part of the ecosystem, we are working closely with food ingredient companies like Barilla, Nestle, Unilever and TiNDLE to bring to restaurants and consumers food innovations that are tastier, healthier and more sustainable.

For example, we are working with Nestle, Unliever and TiNDLE to bring to market new plant-based meat alternatives and working with Barilla to create a delivery-focused pasta experience.

With the evolution of the F&B ecosystem, we see TiffinLabs playing a role in bridging the needs of restaurants, consumers and food ingredient companies via its virtual restaurant brands. As we scale in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, we aim to drive the digitisation of the F&B industry across the markets.

In these three countries alone, there are over two million restaurants operating with only 10-15 per cent of these establishments serving online food delivery compared to a 30 per cent share of F&B spend driven through online food delivery.

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Geography-based salary or location-based salary is compensation adjusted based on the employee’s location and the cost of living in the area. The wage reflects the market rate which is promoted in each city, country, or region by other organisations with an adequate amount to cover the living expenses of their employees (e.g., housing, utilities, transportation).

For instance, employees who are located in a high cost-of-living (COL) area such as New York or San Francisco are paid a higher living wage compared to those who are located in an urban or suburban area such as Montana, Austin, or Boise.

Location-based pay has been known for a long time across all industries. In fact, this type of payment has long been the norm in the technology sector. GitHub, for example, a software development platform with primarily remote teams, has been applying this type of payment for their employees.

Implementing location-based pay offers companies and employees another affordable opportunity to live in a high COL area such as Silicon Valley, a leading US tech hub, or Hong Kong-one of the world’s most expensive cities.

In accordance with the Geographic Pay Policies Study from WorldatWork, up to 67 per cent of employees from the United States expect their wages to be based on where they live. For most non-managerial positions, location is used as a primary factor in benchmarking pay rates and modifying salary ranges.

Furthermore, the demand for remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic has made location-based pay more trendy. In a survey conducted by WorldatWork, 62 per cent of companies have implemented geographic-based pay policies, while 44 per cent are considering adjusting their policies to cope with the growth of remote work.

According to Payscale, almost 43 per cent of employees want the company to continue to work remotely, especially for job positions such as marketing and advertising (75 per cent), information technology (71 per cent), art and design (69 per cent). Not few, especially younger and junior talents, continue working remotely from their parent’s house in another city or even another state.

This situation raises an important question among talents and recruiters; will remote work change the salary calculations to comply with the geographic-based pay regulations?

How to calculate geography-based salary?

With the rising trend of remote work, many employees are considering relocating to an ideally better and less expensive neighbourhood area to move in. Employees now don’t need to find accommodations close to their office anymore. In fact, employees are now more than ever to have the freedom to decide on where to work.

Also Read: How remote work has changed the salary scale in Taiwan

However, geography-based pay comprises many complex factors. For this reason, it is crucial to acknowledge various approaches employers can take to implement these policies.

The following factors are the most common that employers use to calculate the wage:

• Cost of living index: A general expense of a location (e.g., cost of goods, services, transportation, housing, etc.) that a person can expect. 
• Income tax rates: A tax on individual income or entities’ profit. The rate may differ based on the type or the characteristic of the taxpayer and the type of income.
• Market rate: Refer to the amount of salary that one employee receives for a specific job position which is offered by the employer based on the current market of an area or a country.

Employers may apply these factors together to determine the amount of location-based pay. Some employers prefer to apply market rate by city for assigning locations to diverse geographic-based pay.

Minimum wage and salary are also regulated under the local labour law, which means depending on where your business is registered and where your talent is hired, it will determine the amount of the salary and compensation package. This also applies to inter-state and international employment.

However, this approach is not always practical or feasible, especially in organisations that practice cross-border hiring. Hence, as a substitute, many companies will choose a specific singular state, region, or grouping of similar market rate areas as a zone to calculate the compensation.

Pros and cons of geography-based pay in a remote working scenario

There are advantages and disadvantages of location-based salary for both employees and employers, which can be broken down into the following:

The employees

At the very least, employees will be paid fairly depending on where they reside. However, it’s not uncommon when a company chooses to pay the employee with a singular rate, the employee might receive a larger paycheck if the employee is currently residing in a low-cost-of-living area while the hiring company that is currently based in some of the major cities is compensating the employee according to their standard wage.

For instance, Reddit supports its employees’ right to live and work wherever they choose. Instead of calculating employees’ payments based on their location separately, Reddit chooses to scale its pay range based on high-cost areas such as San Francisco and New York.

Also Read: Is the remote working trend “swallowing”​ office employees’​ vacation time?

By conducting a mixed localised pay approach that increased or kept up the wages rather than lowering them, Reddit could settle a single pay range for every employee regardless of where their employees were located.

The employers

On the employer’s side, employers now have wider options to adjust their employment budgets. Employers can now hire remote employees outside the higher-cost region to allow the company to save on payroll, and company operational expenses and, at the same time, be able to reap the rewards of doing business in an established area.

Despite the range of benefits that the local-based salary has to offer to both employers and employees, many factors that contribute to the salary calculation are very complex and can be challenging for many companies.

On the other hand, employers are required to comply with the local labour laws to ensure compliance. Typically, to do that, employers need to have a registered entity where their talents are based and handle the payroll in-house. This situation might not be feasible, especially for companies with limited resources, such as small-medium businesses and startups, who are looking for a more agile solution.

A great way to ensure that your company has a competitive and fair offer to your employees is by working with an Employer of Record (EOR). An Employer of record also saves you some payroll headaches when managing employees from different states and countries.

Through an employer of record (EOR), you can now be able to leverage the location-based salary to maximise your resources to grow your business without risk. Employers can now also aim for global expansion where employers can explore new borderless labour markets and approach a wider scope of talent pool regardless of geographic limitations.

Slasify is a global employment HR service that can assist you on a global expansion journey by hiring and onboarding international talent, as well as maintaining legal compliance. If you plan to expand your business overseas, connect with our labour experts to strategise for compliant global employment.

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LiquidX, a Web3 venture capital studio for the metaverse, today announced that it had acquired a 70 per cent stake for an undisclosed sum in Anime Metaverse, a publishing and licensing company focused on building anime, manga, and dorama in Web3.

In an email interview with e27, Kendrick Wong, Co-Founder and Chairman of LiquidX, stated that Anime Metaverse was acquired due to the company’s focus on intellectual property and infrastructure.

Through Anime Metaverse, LiquidX plans to invest heavily in acquiring existing anime IP and grow the brand.

“LiquidX believes retail Web3 adoption will be achieved by creating nostalgic and innovative experiences for our community. We will accomplish this by creating an original Intellectual Property (IP) project and licensing existing IP contents,” he said.

Anime Metaverse acts as a conduit for anime, manga, and dorama into Web3, providing a platform for entry and exploration of an ever-growing industry through its proprietary anime marketplace.

Budding industries initially develop IP that reflects their unique subculture. When retail enters a new enterprise, they seek familiarity with the intellectual property they have grown up with. Anime Metaverse is bridging that gap by producing an original anime subculture while investing, licensing, and acquiring existing IPs.

“We believe this will allow the anime industry to enter Web3 in an established, structured, and proven framework while enabling anime fans to grow alongside their favourite anime, manga, or dorama,” Wong said.

Also Read: How Web3 will revolutionise borderless banking in Southeast Asia

Describing itself as the world’s first NFT projects aggregator, LiquidX functions as an active investor, acquirer, and operator, helping family offices and private equity funds diversify into Web3.

LiquidX specialises in creating long-term value for NFT holders by building unique gaming and community experiences.

It focused on three areas regarding its activities in the Web3 sector: Intellectual Property, infrastructure, and gaming.

Wong said it “likes to say it removes the admin work from our portfolio companies to let them focus on what they do best: growing their brand.”

“Our expertise in growing startups helps the phenomenal team behind Anime Metaverse immensely. The Anime Metaverse team has the autonomy of a founder but the resources of an enterprise. Specifically, Anime Metaverse will be able to tap into the in-house resources of LiquidX, a growing team of over sixty developers, tokenomics leaders, finance practitioners, and artists,” he continued.

He further explained that globally, according to a Venture Beat report, NFT sales reached US$17.6 billion last year, 200 times higher than the US$82 million they generated in 2020. One-third of this figure came from NFT game sales alone, which clocked US$5.71 billion in 2021.

“Given the nascent industry, we strongly focus on the fundamentals when we make acquisitions and ask what the next 100 million users will require as they enter Web3,” Wong closed.

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“What is your career aspiration? Where do you want to be in five, or even 15, years from now? Because every career decision you make for yourself should always move you closer to that.” My mentor once again gives me advice as we sit for our monthly lunch appointments in one of the hotel’s restaurants.

For as long as I’ve known, at least up to this lunch, working in hotels has been all I dreamed of.

Hotels were always the coolest part of holidays: sightseeing? Who cares?! Check out my hotel pool and that room service menu! This was the world I wanted to be a part of. The joy and happiness I had from hotel experiences, I wanted to share that with others too.

With that passion, it was easy to apply and attend the top Hospitality Management University in Switzerland. That foundation transitioned me into a Corporate Management Trainee program in a  luxury hotel chain, which ultimately promoted me into a position of management, which led me to this lunch.

“Is this where you want to be? Spending family time in the service of others?” He would continue as I sat there silently.

He had a point. At this point in my career, I had missed birthdays and Christmas celebrations, and I was not feeling much satisfaction from the sacrifice. Can I really do this for 15 more years?

This specific lunch didn’t change it all for me. In fact, this “lunch” happened monthly, and every “lunch”, the advice would weigh down on me a little harder.

During this time, I was assigned a project that would have me work closely with IT personnel and software developers, and I was starting to be exposed to tech jargon such as “APIs”, “JSON”, and “SQL”. The more I learnt about new tech, the louder the advice got: “Every career decision you make for yourself should always move you closer.”

Taking the plunge into the abyss

At this point, many of you must be thinking, “Aha! He now knows  what he wants to do now.”  But that’s where you’ll be wrong, but I was interested enough that I knew I was moving “closer” to it. And with that, I was off.

Also Read: Why it is never too late for mid-career professionals to be an entrepreneur

“In restless dreams, I walked alone”, Paul Simon would sing through Spotify to me as I was figuring out my next moves.

At this point, I had now quit my job without a solid plan and without guidance, no more mentor shouting advice at me, no advice at all, really. I was fully engulfed in the Sound of Silence.

The silence, or the void of advice, really did start to take its toll. Not knowing if what I was doing was “right” had left me questioning myself a lot.

“Am I learning the right things? How do I put different technologies together? Wait, how did they do that?”

As I continued with my journey I happened across a local coding boot camp, and as the theme would continue, in silence, I joined.

My time at the boot camp was actually pretty solid. I did learn about “APIs”, “JSON”, “SQL”, and more, of course, but learning the skills was only the start of the journey into software engineering. I graduated boot camp months later, ready to look for a job, but again, without advice or guidance. 

This is when I first got in touch with Rocket Academy. Working with Kai Yuan, the CEO directly, was the first time I received workable advice on approaching the industry. I had personalised debriefings to understand how to improve in interviews and tests.

Being integrated into the Rocket Community is what changed my luck. No longer was I walking along, no longer was I not receiving feedback. Instead, I had found a group of friends, colleagues and peers to share experiences with. Up until now, I was focused on gaining the skillset, which, don’t get me wrong, is important, but I had forsaken the need for my own personal “network”. 

In restless dreams, I now walked with friends.

I landed my first job in software engineering and worked as a full-stack software developer on many projects for startups to multinational companies. As I progressed with my new career, I kept in touch with Rocket Academy.

Also Read: Specialists vs generalists: The ultimate career choice

I had always enjoyed the community at Rocket Academy, and if anything, count it as its most valuable offering. A coding boot camp providing coding knowledge is baseline, that goes without saying. A boot camp providing true guidance and sincere help in the career transition is something else. And wouldn’t you know it, one day I had the opportunity to join the team. 

Rocketing forward

In hospitality, we often discuss the anticipation of needs by empathising with our customers. For example,  imagine you were taking a dip in that awesome hotel pool, and after a round, you decide to get out. Yes, there are towels stacked up on the side for self-service, but imagine if someone were to anticipate your need and be ready with a towel as you climb out of the pool.

Bootcamp students may not need towels, but they too have other needs. Working in Rocket, we go beyond just thinking about the base education for our students. The experience we have designed goes past “just” teaching the skills you need in tech, but we also anticipate the journey it would take to get you there and flourish.

We strive to build a lasting community beyond graduation, especially as we expand into Hong Kong and beyond. We also provide graduates with that network so they can conquer the software engineering world.

So as Rocket graduates swim through the giant pool that is the tech industry, Rocket Academy would be at the side, waiting to hand them that towel as they climb out of the pool.

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NFTs caused the hype and booming effect back in 2021. Now, the market has entered the bear market phase for the first two quarters of 2022. According to the “NFT Market Report Q2 2022” of Nonfungible.com, the total sales volume of NFTs in July 2022 decreased by almost US$4 billion compared to January 2022.  What happened? What are the reasons for this fiasco to happen?

What is NFT?

NFT (non-fungible token) is defined as a unique and irreplaceable identifier created by the Blockchain algorithm. It was born to first solve the problem of creating scarcity for digital artists to take control of their arts and collections’ value. Currently, the NFT market achieved its mature phase as its utilities have been explored in a variety of applications further than just arts and collections.

Current NFTs market situation

Ever since the NFTs market started to enter the bear market in May 2022, it experienced a linear decline, with the sales volume only around US$647.23 million in July, which is 26 per cent lower than June this year. The drop in sales volume led to a significant decline in the number of transactions and unique buyers.

Also, high-profile NFTs collectibles such as Bored Apes Yacht Club (BAYC) witnessed a 33 per cent drop in floor price showing the investors’ low confidence level.

Factors that caused the plummet in sales

As stated by CoinTelegraph, “Some of the key factors negatively impacting the hype around NFTs are falling Ether (ETH) prices, a lack of secondary market demand, and unrealistic gas fees.”

Also Read: Where is the future of NFTs and metaverse heading towards?

Since NFTs and Cryptocurrency have an undeniable close relationship, especially Ethereum which NFTs are minted on, the drop in price of those cryptocurrencies heavily affected the liquidity of NFTs as well as the overall stance of investors. 

In addition, the NFTs project’s community defined over 80 per cent of its success. Hence, once the community is no longer interested in the potential of the NFTs, they will immediately liquidate the NFT to reserve the cryptocurrency for safer places. 

Another reason for this is the lack of utilities and practical value that NFTs can offer. After the hype in 2021, investors noticed that most of the failing NFT projects had zero practical value and even creativity, which created a bubble in the NFT market. With the current correction of the market, NFT projects must expand their creativity and value offered to their community in order to revive its interest.

Will the NFT market recover?

In my opinion, NFT contains beneficial characteristics and its efficiency in the operating process. The current collapse of the NFT market might be a good thing when it showed a necessary innovation in NFT’s use cases must be taken to succeed. Some of the innovative applications of NFT are real-life assets ownership, GameFi, and royalty. 

For example, Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), is pushing his effort to utilise NFT in identification (ID) for the government as an effort from the industry leader. Also, Meta (formerly Facebook) recently confirmed its NFT integration across 100 countries after working with Coinbase. 

Hence, we can all agree with the undeniable benefits of NFT, and its market will recover in the long term with the practical and innovative value held. 

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