Food Market Hub Wants to Be a Digital Procurement Platform for Restaurant Business

One of the problems that restaurant owners still have to face today is the coordination around ordering and purchasing raw materials from suppliers. Also control expenses, especially if the owner has more than one restaurant.

Most of the management of these activities is still done manually, from using chat applications like WhatsApp to direct communication. As a result, many restaurant owners cannot control and manage their expenses related to kitchen needs comprehensively.

Seeing these problems, Food Market Hub (FMH) is here to provide a management platform that helps businesses automate procurement and inventory systems by utilizing big data and artificial intelligence technologies.

FMH is a company from Malaysia, founded by Anthony See who is the owner of the restaurant, and Shayna Teh in 2017. Apart from Malaysia and Indonesia, FMH has also been present in Thailand, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

“FMH tries to make it easier for restaurant owners to manage their expenses by utilizing technology that is integrated with their POS system and can be connected to available chat apps,” said Anthony to DailySocial.id.

Bridging Restaurant Owners And Suppliers

In particular, users of the FMH platform can connect with suppliers or suppliers of raw materials as they wish and integrate the systems they already use (POS, inventory, accounting systems, etc.) in restaurants into FMH’s cloud-based platform.

Thus, the process of ordering raw materials is considered to be easier and more efficient because decisions regarding procurement of goods can be made through one platform.

“In addition to helping restaurant owners, the biggest problem that suppliers often experience is how they can offer their products such as vegetables that have a time limit of use. It is hoped that through FMH they can offer these products directly to various restaurant owners with the aim of depleting their stock,” said Anthony.

After officially being present in Indonesia since August 2021, there are 27 Indonesian restaurant brands covering 1335 outlets, currently digitizing the procurement system, inventory management and all backend operations through the Food Market Hub.

There are 26 other restaurant businesses that are currently switching to FMH’s digital procurement system and ecosystem, including Tahooe and Wanfan.

The F&B business that continues to grow is indeed an opportunity for technology innovators. For restaurant business management solutions, there are already a number of players in the local startup ecosystem.

One of them is Esensi Solusi Buana, their SaaS service has now been adopted by more than 500 F&B brands. Then outside of that there is Moka which also includes Moka Fresh products for the procurement of fresh ingredients.

Immediately Raise Funding For Series B

Prior to expanding to Indonesia, FMH had pocketed series A+ funding of US$ 8.5 million or equivalent to Rp 121 billion. The funding was led by AC Ventures (also supported by Malaysia Penjana Kapital fund).

Previously involved investors in the funding, including Go-Ventures, SIG, and 500 Global, including East Ventures, Velocity Ventures, Capital Code, and several angel investors.

This funding round brings FMH’s total series A funding to $12.5 million including the previous $4 million series A round in November 2020.

The fresh funds were used by FMH to expand their business to Indonesia, penetrate the local market further, and strengthen its presence in Singapore and Thailand. This year FMH also has plans to raise a series B fund.

Asked whether there is a strategic partnership between FMH and the Gojek ecosystem, Anthony emphasized that there are no plans in that direction.

Their focus is on providing services and technology to MSME actors, around 80-90% of FMH targeting them. However, FMH also targets enterprises such as KFC as their clients.

“For our monetization strategy, we have free and paid options, all tailored to client needs. Some clients choose the paid way so that it can be integrated with their POS and accounting systems,” said Anthony.

Regarding the FMH service area, the focus is still on big cities like Jakarta. The plan is that they will also expand to Bandung, Surabaya and Bali. The target for the Indonesian market is expected to reach around 10 thousand restaurants.