Food Story going mobile to whet Thai appetite

Mobile users in Thailand will soon be able to enjoy an enhanced experience by accessing menus and ordering meals using their smart phone via a Food Story application, while the Thai developers also plan to expand their restaurant management system to the US, Japan and Europe in the near future.

Thagoon Chartsutipol, chief executive officer of Living Mobile, described his company’s mission as to renovate the traditional restaurant management system to support the digital era, which had led him to set up the Food Story system as a hybrid system on the cloud to support restaurants anytime, anywhere both online and offline – and both nationwide and in the international market place.

“We want to change and improve users’ experience when they go to a restaurant to order food. Meanwhile, the restaurant will able to control all the ingredients, improve their service and reach all restaurant information real-time via their smart device,” he said.

Thagoon added that the Food Story restaurant management system as currently developed and available was capable of providing over 400 features, such as inventory management, marketing, point of sale, promotional campaign, delivery, sales value and loyalty points.

Importantly though, new features under development will allow users of smart phones or other smart devices to order dishes from Food Story restaurant members using the Food Story app.

“We are developing and testing the ordering of food by smart-phone users and expect that the new feature will be officially announced by the final quarter of this year. The new service will provide a paperless service for restaurants, and users will be able to generate a code after they reach a restaurant member of Food Story, enabling them to remotely order food via their smart phone or other smart device. 

“As a result, participating restaurants will be able to improve their service to support their business, while also reducing staffing costs for fulfilling customer orders. We will also be a [competitive] market place in which end-customers can order food from any restaurants that are Food Story members, which will facilitate the creation of value-added service by our members,” the CEO explained.

Chawin Supawong, business development manager at Living Mobile, said the company now had more than 170 medium- to high-end restaurants as Food Story management-system customers in Thailand.

It also offers the system to around 30 restaurants in Singapore, and to outlets in Australia.

The Food Story restaurant management system is currently available in Thailand for an annual licensing fee of Bt18,000-Bt32,000 for five users, he said.

Living Mobile by the end of this year will also provide the system for small restaurants and food outlets under the Food Story Lite version, at a service fee of around Bt500 per month.

The company expects to reach to have a total of 300 business customers by the year’s end, rising to 1,500-2,000 outlets by the close of 2017, Chawin added.

Meanwhile, it is looking for resellers to expand the business in Japan, New Zealand, the US and Europe in the near future.

“We are trying to develop a system and solution to support the new lifestyle of diners, and to increase productivity as well as the ease of doing business for restaurants so that they can increase their own opportunities for expansion,” the business development manager said.

   “We are keen to enable the improvement of quality management and opportunity for restaurants, both online and offline,” he added.