Current state of the food and beverage industry in Singapore

With the development and swift changes in the field of technology and forces of current trends in globalization, world has become a international village, categorized by an explosive development in global business and competition. Entrepreneurship that is one of the significant financial force for a country is empowering people to search opportunity where others find Entrepreneurship, which is one the most powerful financial force known to obstinate challenges. This study will be based on setting up a restaurant business in the food and beverage industry of Singapore. With all the specifications, a detail business plan will be set up for the new restaurant business.

According to the current statistical data, Singapore remains one of the utmost interesting and important “food markets in Southeast Asia”. With a highest disposal income rates, the average monthly per people capital food spending is around C$220, on the basis of the Singapore Survey of Statistics Household Expenditure (Baker & Friel, 2014). This current amount includes an regular monthly per capital expenses of C$120 and C$100 on cooked and non-cooked food respectively.

 

Figure 1: Food and Beverage sector contribution to the national GDP growth

(Source:Singapore Food and Beverages industry overindulging, 2018)

On the other hand,Singapore’s Beverage and Food industry contributed around C$9.81bn or near about 3.5% to the total national GDP in 2012. On the flip side, this country has one of the highest food intake levels in Southeast Asia, assimilating around 3% of GDP. Due to the limited native agricultural production as well as rapid growth, Singapore imports around 90% of its goods, specifically from other Asian countries. Current calculations of food and beverage imports in Singapore state that it has been account for near about 8% of GDP in the previous year (Christmann, Leong, Tan, Christmann& Leong, 2017). This country’s drink and food retailing services accumulates near about 3000 department stores, supermarkets, provisions that sell processed food items, Agri-cultural foods and others. Currently, total revenue in Food and Beverage industry amounts to US$270m in 2018. This revenue is predictable to exhibit an annual development degree around 27.5%, ensuing the market volume of US$715m by 2022 (Dossey, Morales-Ramos & Rojas, 2016).

 

Figure 2: Food and Beverage services index

(Source:retailnews.asia, 2018)

Currently, younger group of PMETs and middle aged PMETs are customers with their increasing tastes are developing day by day in Singapore. The middle-aged customer propensities are well-connected with their sophisticated of taste needed significantly from their travels and the younger-aged group is highly influenced by the modern cafes, eating style and others. On the other hand, development in the inbound tourism is also developing taste and inclusion of different food tastes in this country. Another group of travellers are self-governing businesspersons who participate in Singapore and develop a Singaporean workforce (allianceexperts.com, 2018). These overseas businessmen are capable to indulge in worldly drinks and food in Singapore’s diverse selection. On the flip side, western food taste effect has had families choose for beverage and foods shared to the west. These group of consumers are opting to consume western cuisines rather than traditional ones.

Trends affecting customer preferences in the food and beverage industry

In order to compare and analyse both the past and current trends initially there is a need to identify what are those trends. Currently, there are five trends are dwelling in the Food and Beverage industry, which are changing preferences of customers, technological advancements, e-commerce, food safety and switching to sustainability and developing case of mergers and acquisition of businesses. With a developing concern of health and wellness, food preferences of customers becoming more and more stricter (bizjournals.com, 2018). Therefore, it is obvious that many food and beverage organizations will introduce new food items or launch healthier food items in the market. These initiatives are paving the path of developing mergers and acquisitions. On the other hand, food safety and food sustainability become an important issue after the “International Food Information Council Foundation’s Food & Health Survey”. Marketing is also an essential part of the business operations, hence, switching to E-commerce is considered as an affordable and effective medium to reach to customers with information that can help in increasing sales. Like marketing, technological advancements within the company is becoming important in establishing better workforce efficiency as well as decreasing work life trace, make ease of the production process (bizjournals.com, 2018).

Food and Beverage industry in 2017 has seen trends and developments mainly in diet planning, textures and themes. It has been found out that customer behaviours have changed from ingredients to the ethical values. 2017 specifically shown emergence of new experiments with multisensory foods and drinks that were developed to appeal to the senses than just the taste preferences. It has been seen that various brands have acknowledged that texture can add on their items (Johnson, 2015). Though the concern on balance diet and healthy eating was still constant from the previous year in the Food and Beverage industry and in urge of balancing busy lifestyle, concepts like ‘meat-free Monday’ or ‘free-from Friday’ have emerged in the previous years. On the other hand, with effective technological involvement in developing customer engagement, more personalized service offerings have increased in 2017.

 

Figure 3: Organic and healthy food trends on a yearly basic with future predictions

(Source: alliedmarketresearch.com, 2018)

From the above analysis of the past and present trends in the Food and Beverage industry it has been cleared out that 2017 has invested in developing more integrated customer experience and provide preference more on developing customer relationship. On the other hand, currently, businesses and the entire industry is focusing more of increasing business profitability but also not neglecting their consumer preferences.

Recommendations for setting up a beach restaurant in Singapore

These types of trends in consumer tastes and preferences in the Singapore Food and Beverage industry will be helpful for the new entrepreneurship venture. This trends will be helpful for the establishment of western style restaurant in this country. Western style of foods and drinks will help in attracting consumers for the new business. Developing revenue, brand value and attracting new consumer group will be easy with these trends.

Main concept

Apart  from the traditional and other types of restaurant available in the Singapore market as well as all around the world, this restaurant is aiming at providing foods and other beverages to customers with a unique theme around them. This restaurant will provide a great pleasure to the travellers who wants to have a taste of their meals and drinks, relaxing on the beach. The concept of the restaurant will be a beach restaurant. Name of the restaurant will be “Beach Incidents”. This restaurant will have no typical restaurant set up, people will be able to take their meals from the counter and have it at the sea shore. Only they have to payment first for their meals and drinks. Both the domestic and foreign people will be delighted to visit and have a dinner or lunch at this type of restaurant while smelling the sea.

Cuisine preference

The main cuisine of the restaurant will be western cuisine along with the traditional food items and drinks of Singapore.

Target market

The target market of this restaurant will be young-aged people and the middle-aged people. The young-aged people will be appropriate for this type of beach restaurant and they are more habituated with the western cuisine. The middle-aged people, counting both the overseas travellers and domestic people, will be interested in experiencing the western cuisine and the traditional one.

Location and direct competitors

The restaurant will be located at Tanjong Beach, Sentosa. The direct competitors will be Tanjong beach club, Old Habits, LeBar, The Cliff and others near the beach.

Colour scheme of the restaurant

The colour scheme of a restaurant should go with the structure, foods, customers and theme of the restaurant. Each single colour has a psychological impact on the consumers. The entrance of the restaurant will have an yellow colour effect, which will lit up the mood of the customers. The bar will have a blue colour effect that will provide a shooting effect on the customers (Giebelhausen, Chan &Sirianni, 2016). On the other hand, as there will be no proper food section for this restaurant, it can be said that the payment section and counter from where, customers will be asking their orders should have a neutral colours.

Target market and direct competitors

 

Figure 4: Colour scheme

(Source:Giebelhausen, Chan &Sirianni, 2016)

Ambience of the restaurant

Entire ambience for a restaurant is created through the lightning, music, decorations of the available rooms. This restaurant as said above will not have a proper and traditional building set up should carefully select the lightning and music as well as decorations for their available spaces. This restaurant will have both the slow tempo music at the food section and high tempo music at the bar section where most of the party people or young-group of customers will visit. On the other hand, the lightning will be changing lights including the mood of relaxation and fun making scenarios at the beach (Uriarte,Hernández, Zamora &Isalgue, 2016). The decoration of the restaurant will be depending on the food and drinks available. Decoration will be based on 3D cinematography process, in which people will have pictorial version of all available items at the bar and food court along with the menu. Apart from these calligraphy and street arts will be there at the walls of the restaurant to encourage young-customers.

 

Figure 5: Wall art at the restaurant

(Source: Kilmer & Kilmer, 2014)

 

Figure 6: Wall art at the entrance of the restaurant

(Source:Kilmer & Kilmer, 2014)

 

Figure 7: Sample of street arts at the restaurant walls

(Source: Kilmer & Kilmer, 2014)

Maintaining effective layout and ergonomics at the restaurant is easy to reduce chances of risk and stress from the staff as well as customers. The floor planning and design of the restaurant is given below;

 

Figure 8: Floor plan for the restaurant

(Source: Nel,Williams, Steyn & Hind, 2018)

This type of floor plan will suit the ambience of the restaurant with the food and drinking section in it within a small space. This type of strategic floor plan will help better communication between the consumers and the staff easily. This type of floor planning will help staff to stay as close as to the consumers while they are having their drinks and foods if they prefer to have it in the restaurant.

Restaurant hierarchy and staff

This restaurant will have staffs like kitchen staff, general staff, a bar tender and cleaning staff. The management structure will not follow the hierarchical structure at the restaurant since it will be a small restaurant at the beginning (Bratton & Gold, 2017). Two chef will be appointed with five helping hands with them. The general staff who will provide food will be five and the cleaning staff will be three. Total human resource of the restaurant will be fifteen.

Color scheme and ambience of the restaurant

Human resource package for the staff

All the staff will be given a base salary based on their responsibilities. As it is a restaurant and bar at the beach, availability of night  services and overtime will be there and the incentive scheme will be based on the extra hours work and effectiveness of the staff. Medical facilities will be present at the restaurant for the staff in case of any accident (Boella, 2017). All the staff will be give breaks after eight hours of work and Sunday will be official day off for them. They will get an additional day off on their payment day each month within first week.  Salary of the cleaning staff will be 35 Singapore Dollar a day, general staffs like waiters, bartenders and others will get 40 to 50 Singapore Dollar a day, Chef will get 100 Singapore Dollar per day and the helping kitchen staff will get 60 Singapore Dollar per day. Employees will get opportunities of job flexibility form the human resources management team in this hotel whenever they are scheduled. This benefit will provide effective opportunity for building employee loyalty. On the other hand, this restaurant will offer one free meal per shift to the staff or discounts on their meals. Each year existing staff and new employees will get a training and professional development. The existing employees will get 30 hours of training and 24 hours of professional development opportunities and the new employees will get 40 to 60 hours of training every year from the HR team. These benefits are valuable for developing employee strength and skill in the food and beverage sector. Hence, these above mentioned benefits should be provided to the employees.

The suggestive wine list is given below. These are some of the famous wines in Singapore and keeping them in the wine list is going to be effective for the restaurant.

Merlot, Van Loveren

Blue Velvet Pinot Noir, Van Loveren

Chardonnay, Copper Ridge California

Chardonnay, Claro Wine of Chile 

Cabernet Sauvignon, Claro Wine of Chile

There will be some alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages and they are listed in the following section. 

Alcoholic beverages

• Whisky
• Rum
• Scotch
• Beer

Non alcoholic Beverages

• Different types of juice will be included
• Special fruit juice
• Vegetable Juice for the elderly people
• Drinks for children under the age of 10.
• Different cold drinks for adults

Starter

Pizza, Burger, Sandwich, Different fries, Vegetable Salad, Fruit salad, baby corn fries, chicken fries, chicken drum sticks, chicken rolls, vegetable rolls etc.

Main course

Char Kway Teow , Bak Kut Teh, Chilli Crab, Fish Head Curry, Fish Head Curry, Rojak, Roti Prata, Satay, Wanton Mee, Laksa, Dim Sum, Chicken dishes, Noodles, Bak Chor Mee, Oyster Omelette, Hokkien Prawn Mee and others.

Apart from these traditional Singapore dishes there will be some western cuisines too and the list of those are given in the following segment.

San Francisco sourdough bread, Pot roast, Fajitas, Chicken fried steak, Wild Alaska salmon, California roll, Buffalo wings, Indian frybread and many others.

Conclusion

From the above business plan regarding establishment of a new restaurant in the developed food and beverage industry of Singapore, it can be said that several things starting from the design to the food services and items are important here. On the other  hand, it could be said that from the analysis of several factors, importance of entrepreneurship in growth of food and beverage industry in Singapore has been understood. On the other hand, individual contribution as well as management process in retaining sustainability of a business has been achieved through this study 

References

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Barth, J. J. (2017). Optimisation of Wine and Spirit Inventory Assets in Fine Dining Restaurants. In Handbook of Research on Holistic Optimization Techniques in the Hospitality, Tourism, and Travel Industry (pp. 365-380). IGI Global.

Bizjournals.com. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2018/01/29/top-5-trends-for-food-and-beverage-industry.html

Boella, M. (2017). Human resource management in the hotel and catering industry. Routledge.

Bratton, J., & Gold, J. (2017). Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave.

Christmann, P., Leong, J., Tan, M., Christmann, P., & Leong, J. (2017). EAC Nutrition: Regional Expansion Strategy. Darden Business Publishing Cases, 1-25.

Dossey, A. T., Morales-Ramos, J. A., & Rojas, M. G. (Eds.). (2016). Insects as sustainable food ingredients: production, processing and food applications. Academic Press.

Food industry in Singapore and F&B Singapore market trends. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.allianceexperts.com/en/knowledge/countries/asia/chances-in-the-singapore-food-market/

Giebelhausen, M. D., Chan, E., &Sirianni, N. J. (2016). Fitting Restaurant Service Style to Brand Image for Greater Customer Satisfaction.

Gordon, R. T., &Brezinski, M. H. (2016). The complete restaurant management guide. Routledge.

Johnson, D. (2015). Legislation and practices for texture-modified food for institutional food. In Modifying Food Texture(pp. 223-238).

Kilmer, R., & Kilmer, W. O. (2014). Designing interiors. John Wiley & Sons.

Nel, J., Williams, A., Steyn, R., & Hind, C. (2018). Customer experiences and expectations of sit-down restaurants: An auto-ethnographic perspective on restaurant failure.

Organic Food and Beverages Market by Organic Foods (Organic Foods and Vegetables, Organic Meat, Fish and Poultry, Organic Dairy Products, Organic Frozen and Processed Foods, Other Organic Foods), and Organic Beverages (Organic Non Dairy Beverages, Organic Coffee and Tea, Organic Beer and Wine, and Other Organic Beverages) – Global Opportunity Analysis and Industry Forecast, 2014-2022. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.alliedmarketresearch.com/organic-food-beverage-market

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Singapore Food and Beverages industry overindulging. (2018). Retrieved from https://emergingmarketsdirect.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/singapore-food-and-beverages-industry-overindulging/

Uriarte, U., Hernández, R. J., Zamora, J. L., &Isalgue, A. (2016). Side-view atmospheres under outdoor midday high luminance. Buildings, 6(4), 53.

Yeh, M. C., Platkin, C., Fishman, J., Fuentes, L., & Parikh, N. (2014). Restaurant management views on the views on the new national menu labeling laws. International Journal of Nutrition Dietetics, 2(1), 1-18.