Will the ‘REV’ tablet turbocharge Cuscapi’s F&B business?: Page 2 of 2

Competitive landscape
 
From a trial done at a single western restaurant, using an Android tablet, Cuscapi claims that REV offers F&B outlets a hattrick of benefits.
 
The first is around cost. With around 30% of a waiter’s time taken up by order taking, a pilot showed that this can be taken away leaving the waiters to do more important tasks. Or, an outlet can choose to reduce its headcount. Her says this can save each outlet 25% in labour costs.
 
Second, the pilot showed that REV actually helped the restaurant increase the bill per table versus other tables at the restaurant that did not have REV. He attributes this to the fact that REV can be programmed to suggest diners make certain orders, for example a salad at a 30% discount, to go with a meat dish ordered.
 
“With so many of the waiters at mid-tier restaurants being non-Malaysians, the ability to upsell to customers is already being lost. We feel REV can address this,” he says.
 
Third and most important, Her believes that REV actually helps to give customers a better dining experience, which then leads to them coming back – which in turn means repeat business.
 
Elaborating on this, he says that REV lets customers know how long their food will take to be prepared and also gives them a chance to offer feedback to the restaurant after their meals. “Gen Y especially will appreciate this, as they want to be empowered with information.”
 
With the change in its business model, Cuscapi is also changing the way it operates with the introduction of REV.
 
Again, pointing to its deep knowledge of the F&B industry, six months ago Cuscapi established a new department staffed with ex-F&B personnel whose job is to work with the marketing departments of their F&B customers to come up with promotions that will be programmed into REV.
 
“This is part of our value in selling customers managed services through REV. We are not selling them the tablet. We can even help them manage their operations. Many technology companies don’t do this, but we can,” Her claims.
 
All this in an effort to position Cuscapi as an expert in customer interactions. Her points to an interesting reality in the F&B industry: The chains do not have teams specialising in customer interactions, with their marketing and customer service teams working separately. “We think this is wrong,” he says.
 
REV is the bid to bridge this yawning gap.
 
As far as competitors go, Her says there is a startup in the United States that has something similar called E la Carte.
 
“But their solution is focused on the US market and it is not at the level which we are offering ours, which is fully integrated with the operations of the F&B outlet,” he claims.
 
His bigger worry is about deep-pocketed non-traditional players such as Taobao of China, which recently started offering to help restaurants offer their menus online so that diners can pre-order and pay for their food before coming to the restaurant. That’s probably just a start.
 
But Cuscapi has more than a head-start and leveraging on its existing customer base of thousands of F&B outlets, including the likes of McDonald’s, Cuscapi hopes REV will live up to its name and propel the company, which is on the verge of a move from ACE to the main board of Bursa Malaysia, to the ranks of fast growth companies.
 
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