Food & Box is an easy-to-use terminal for the direct purchase platform “Food & Service.” (image: Kobizmedia/ Korea Bizwire)
SEOUL, Sep. 25 (Korea Bizwire) – SK Telecom said on September 24 that it has launched “Food & Box,” the dedicated terminal to be used by restaurants and caterers to place online orders of food ingredients with small suppliers. Food & Box is an easy-to-use terminal for the direct purchase platform “Food & Service” provided by the Korea Food Service Industry Information Center.
According to SK Telecom, as many as 70 percent of restaurant operators are small scale with more than 20 percent of them suffering from financial difficulties every year. Currently the cost to purchase food ingredients accounts for 45 percent of the total cost, which is made worse by the highly complicated distribution system.
In order to address this problem, Food & Service has offered the online purchasing service since December last year by linking producers with restaurant operators and making available more than 5,000 high-quality items from 400 suppliers nationwide. Although Food & Service is available online, some of the restaurant owners were unable to have access to the service due to lack of fixed-line or Wi-Fi Internet connections.
Food & Box is an easy-to-use terminal for the direct purchase platform “Food & Service” (image: SK Telecom)
SK Telecom discovered the niche and launched the mobile-based service with a 10.1-inch display and 3G connection speed. The company plans to increase the number of terminals in use to 30,000 by the year’s end by offering the service for free.
Lee Myung-geun, SK Telecom’s enterprise solutions head, said, “With the launch of Food & Box, we hope to provide material help to small-scale restaurant owners with low-tech solutions. I am certain the solution could help the food service industry improve their competitive edge by bringing down the cost substantially.”
By M.H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
