BigDish ready to 'disrupt' Asia restaurant industry

Restaurant yield management technology company BigDish updated the market on its Asian strategy on Wednesday, following its announcement last week on the acquisition of looloo.

The London-listed firm said it was preparing to grow its Asia business through marketing new technology, which was currently under development.

In the region, it said it had determined that yield management for restaurants was gaining acceptance from both restaurants and consumers.

The company described yield management as a dynamic pricing strategy which charged different prices at different times for the same product.

BigDish said yield management “transformed” the airline industry in the 1970s, and forever changed the way airline seats were sold, with the directors believing that yield management would “transform” the restaurant industry.

The underlying driver behind any yield management strategy was the incentive to influence consumer behaviour, it added.

In Asia, BigDish said it had identified that its most popular time slot was 2100.

However, in off-peak times, restaurants could offer discounted tables of up to 50% off the food only, with the more off-peak times having a greater incentive.

It explained that, even in busy periods, restaurants could still have empty tables and a restaurant was able to market those tables at low discounts on BigDish.

“The Asian opportunity is a big one for BigDish,” said chairman Aidan Bishop.

“It is an exciting part of the world in relation to young disruptive consumer tech companies.”

Bishop said the business had low overheads, with Manila being a “great base of operation” for its technology development, adding that the firm was able to develop “world class” products at a fraction of the cost of what it would be in the UK.

“This gives us a huge advantage as we consider technology development to be at the core of our strategy, the company has exciting plans for this and looks forward to updating the market in September.”

BigDish said it believed that yield management presented an opportunity to “disrupt” restaurant discount cards and voucher or coupon businesses.

It said those “old” business models generated minimal to no data, and were ripe for disruption.

In addition, those old models offered little flexibility to restaurants, the board claimed, saying it believed it was important to create a win-win solution for both restaurants and consumers.

In terms of demographics, BigDish said it had discovered by using its proprietary big data business intelligence platform that the most frequent users tended to be female, between the ages of 24 and 39.

The company expected to see more growth within that demographic, it confirmed.

It explained that emerging markets in Asia were “excellent” growth opportunities for the company, as many of those countries had rising consumer spending, and would consequently benefit the restaurant industry.

The company said it would provide a further update next week on its UK strategy, and was on schedule to launch in Bath in September.

“I believe that within the next three years that dynamic pricing will become common place within the restaurant industry and restaurant membership and discount cards will become obsolete,” said chief executive officer Joost Boer.

“It is encouraging to see early signs of acceptance already and we intend to stay at the forefront of innovative technology within this space.”