Rising rental costs, manpower shortages, and unpredictable costs of goods make the F&B industry one of the most challenging industries to operate in. At the sharing session organised by SME Centre@Little India at the Indian Heritage Centre on the 29th May 2019, we had 4 speakers sharing their best practices for players in the F&B industry.

Mr Rajkumar Thanapalan, Business Advisory Manager from SME Centre, shared with us the possible solutions to consider when faced with challenges relating to manpower, workflow, and inventory. He also mentioned the available grants that F&B businesses can tap into such as the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG) and the Enterprise Development Grant (EDG).

Zeemart’s Chief Operating Officer, Mr Caleb Lye, gave a brief sharing of Zeemart’s journey thus far in building an F&B ecosystem. He then gave an overview on how Zeemart is designed to alleviate those challenges brought up by Mr Rajkumar.

This was then followed by Mr Sukhvinder Singh, Operations Director of Riverwalk Tandoor, who spoke about his operational best practices. With increasing operational costs, the key for businesses to maximise productivity is the effective use of technology.

To conclude the session, we heard about lowering the logistical costs and the MOQ of ordering by exploring the consolidated logistics model from one of Little India Digitalisation partners, Dei Holdings, as shared by their Business Development Manager, Ms Sivanes R. She shared how purchasing products from a consolidation hub allows businesses to obtain the best overall logistics performance. Consolidators collect shipments from several suppliers, consolidate those shipments, and then direct them to the relevant businesses. This creates a more efficient network for procurement, reducing the amount of logistic support needed.

We would like to thank SME Centre@Little India for organising this event and for giving us this opportunity to network with the forward-thinking people of the F&B industry.