The past century has seen the adoption of high-end technology become increasingly prevalent across industries around the world. However, one industry that has resisted that change is the hospitality industry, insisting on the value of “the human touch”.
With the hallmark of great hospitality being attention to detail and personalisation made only possible by human instinct and intuition, even the smartest artificial intelligence software has been unable to compare.
Things took a turn when the COVID-19 pandemic hit when human contact became the enemy as the primary vessel of germs and viruses. Many hotels and restaurants had to quickly pivot and turn to technology to keep these physical human touchpoints to a minimum.
Technology adoption has also expedited the introduction of sustainability solutions in F&B, such as waste management, as well as central and cloud kitchen services that helped many small restaurants compete and survive.
This isn’t a new trend. Fully automated cafes, complete with self-service kiosks, robot baristas, and robot servers, are not uncommon in South Korea. These cafes run fully autonomously, without a single human staff and operate completely on a robot workforce.
What about the rest of Asia and, more specifically, Singapore?
Trending now: Robots
Just like in Korea, Singapore is being pushed into faster adoption rates of technology in F&B, driven by huge challenges in finding manpower. Filling the gap are robotic serving and cooking solutions that paved the way for automation in both front and back-of-house services.
F&B Robotics was clearly on display at the recent FHA HoReCa 2022 Exhibition that took place from 25-28 October. There were robots to cook, serve, clean, and do myriad other tasks. These robotics solutions are spearheading transformation in how kitchens and restaurants operate. The Singapore government has even included robotics as a key transformational technology within their Hotel Industry Transformation Map that was announced at the show.
Also Read: How accessible robotic solutions enable business efficiency
The trend of serving robots is becoming more commonplace in different types and sizes of restaurants in Singapore, with some doing more than just serving. They take care of menial, repetitive tasks, freeing up staff to focus on the more important things.
For instance, Robot Chicken Pocha employs this to its greatest advantage, utilising a robot arm to see its main task of frying chicken.
Self-service kiosks have also become the default in many quick-service restaurants, where you won’t find anyone taking orders behind the counter. These kiosks allow staff to focus on delivering food quickly, so customers avoid waiting in long lines to get their orders.
The manpower crunch
Multiple factors are proving to be the driving force behind this pickup in the adoption of technology. Singapore’s F&B industry was among the hardest hit during the pandemic that lasted more than two years.
The first to be affected were the people keeping the industry afloat. As revenue fell drastically, employees were either let go, or many decided to return home for good or could not re-enter Singapore as borders shut during the pandemic.
Data on the Singapore Department of Statistics (Singstat) website showed that about 15,400 employees left the F&B services sector in 2020. With the industry reeling from the crisis, the sector only saw a net increase of 600 workers in 2021.
The manpower shortage in the F&B sector has hit home, especially in recent months, as Singapore significantly eased its COVID-19 restrictions, including increasing the cap on social gathering sizes, allowing F&B eateries to seat 10 fully vaccinated people together, and lifting the ban on the sale and consumption of alcohol after 10.30 pm at F&B establishments. This spells a lot of customers with not enough service team members to serve them.
F&B businesses expect the manpower crunch to worsen and impede the sector’s recovery when tourism picks up again in the coming years. This manpower crisis is not just a local problem. Labour shortages, rising salaries, high turnover, heightening inflation, and more are challenges apparent even in Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries. This and inflation are driving up costs across all aspects of the business, from ingredient purchasing to renting payment and manpower employment.
A pressing need for solutions
The plus side to this early-stage adoption is that there’s still room for growth, a lot of it. The F&B tech space is still very fragmented, with no dominant players. There isn’t a Google or Meta equivalent for F&B tech, at least not yet. FZ Digital hopes to fill that gap in the market with our wide offerings of tried, tested, and proven products and services.
Also Read: Why robotics is just entering its prime phase
We have strong reasons to believe that these trends will accelerate and make F&B tech an exciting growth space since manpower and cost issues will continue to be huge challenges. As robotics and other automation solutions mature and get more cost-effective, the industry is starting to understand the economic benefits of adopting new technologies. Simultaneously consumers are more accepting of these new solutions.
FZ Digital is capable of and is already bringing together automation technologies, such as robotics and digital marketing, and building integrated solutions tailored to F&B customers’ specific needs that leverage our existing restaurant management systems at the core of the business. By integrating these solutions, we can solve new problems and create added value that will save our customers’ costs and manpower and increase revenue.
In the foreseeable future: High tech, no touch
To materialise our vision, several challenges need to be addressed.
We are focused on bringing to market the right solutions and partners to build this vision to solve F&B customers’ most pressing business problems. The F&B industry often has limited IT budgets and expertise, which means the solutions must deliver clear value from the start.
We must also educate the various stakeholders and decision-makers that robotics and automation aren’t a total replacement for human staff. As automation and robotics continue to expand their capabilities to further free up manpower in the dining room and kitchen, it will not remove the need for human labour.
Instead, it will free up manpower requirements for lower-skilled roles so that staff can be more responsive to provide better customer service and perform higher-end skilled tasks.
By recognising the benefits of technology, we can be more efficient. And by embracing the support of technology to augment the human resources we have, the F&B industry can grow by leaps and bounds.
In light of all the above, the next few years will be interesting as we enter a new phase where F&B robotics solutions can be integrated more closely into existing F&B operations and systems, creating new end-to-end experiences.
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