Oddle on pivoting to revenue-sharing model and helping F&B bizs digitalise

Jonathan Lim, founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Oddle, used to be an F&B owner.

He opened his restaurant The Garden in 2011, and has in excess of 13 years of working experience in the food and beverage (F&B) and engineering market, including his calendar year-extensive stint with the National University of Singapore Overseas Faculty (NOC) Programme in Silicon Valley.

As an F&B operator, he observed several gaps in the market that bring about worries for him and other F&B homeowners. Nevertheless there are several digital platforms to do the job with to provide an much easier, holistic working experience for their buyers, it can get frustrating, and restaurant proprietors on their own really don’t get a lot handle or profit around the companies. 

Experiencing similar troubles these as an unachievable 6-figure quota in an endeavor to make an on line purchasing web site for his restaurant, Jonathan determined to be the change needed in this marketplace.

He then begun Oddle in 2014, a 1-stop platform that focuses on serving to F&B proprietors digitise their small business by enabling them to develop a sustainable on the web purchasing system on their very own, collectively with co-founders Alan Goh and Yong Xiang Pua. 

[W]e immediately comprehended that the only sustainable business enterprise product is one particular exactly where all events gain. When our F&B retailers acquire, we acquire alongside one another. Then, we went on to establish a holistic a person-end shop to provide all of our F&B partners’ digital requires, all of which have no established-up expenditures, together with delivering worth-added expert providers like promoting.

– Jonathan Lim, Founder and Chief Govt Officer (CEO) of Oddle

By combining empathy with technology, Oddle fills the gap in the marketplace by delivering small-value, remarkably accessible performance-pushed alternatives that help F&B entrepreneurs maximise their operations by means of wise facts and meaningful engagement. 

Why is there a want to digitise? 

Jonathan emphasises that it is paramount for dining establishments to build an on line-to-offline (O2O) method in current instances.

Using on the web solutions to resolve their difficulties and re-engage with  individuals “ensures the sustainability of restaurant enterprises across changing customer practices and mitigates the economic effect of the pandemic,” Jonathan highlights. 

In get to stay relevant, Jonathan encourages F&B owners to improve and grow their corporations by not only hunting at dine-in answers, but also incorporating other revenue streams that are off-premises. By allowing for prospects access to precious buyer details and insights, they can be smarter and far more productive in driving their small business sustainably into the long run. 

“The major obstacle confronted by quite a few F&B operators is discerning their top purchaser base owing to fragmented info channels induced by several platforms”, he adds. 

Oddle aims to solve these issues, by empowering these company owners who may perhaps be apprehensive about likely digital, and supplying an uncomplicated-to-use platform for all their digitisation requires, from a complete see of orders and payments to the availability of synthetic intelligence (AI) and analytics for their internet marketing functions. 

Digitalisation products and services, manufactured diverse

Oddle runs by a “Always Cafe First” philosophy, which is what differentiates alone from its competition.

“Unlike food stuff marketplaces like Deliveroo or Foodpanda, Oddle features methods that give F&B merchants comprehensive control and transparency of their business enterprise and purchaser data, which makes sure greatest produce at negligible costs”, Jonathan notes.  

With a mission to empower places to eat to acquire cost of their possess potential, Oddle gives an omni-channel system that will help eating places deliver initial-class activities and engagements to their buyers. 

Its technological suite of alternatives include an e-store system with managed shipping and delivery logistics, a reservations system, QR buying, and payment terminals. All these companies are made simple to navigate and use, earning it seamless for cafe homeowners to have them integrated into their firms. 

In addition, Oddle has 3 essential providers that nutritional supplement the procedure, these as managed promoting companies, customer achievement management, and Oddle Eats, their foods discovery platform that extends the restaurant’s achieve to foodstuff enthusiasts across Asia by leveraging Oddle’s databases of 2.3 million people. 

Compared to other platforms that charge restaurant retailers an inflexible mounted amount, Oddle operates on a zero established-up charge model, providing reservations at no excess price tag and getting a minimum proportion only on thriving revenue.

“We also actively enable our retailers spend back again into their business enterprise to push profitability through our  no cost-to-use information-driven advertising and marketing services”, Jonathan adds.

With Oddle’s sources, Jonathan highlights that dining establishments can also reward by acquiring much more manage in excess of their on line functions as compared to other platforms supplying these types of digitisation products and services. 

[O]ur winning edge above other platforms is that our companions have complete accessibility to the info of their buyers. This is of pivotal worth to all F&B operations, as almost nothing is a lot more crucial for their company than KYC ([Knowing] Your Purchaser).

– Jonathan Lim, Founder and CEO of Oddle

By linking their possess commercial success with their merchants’, Oddle stands company on its basic principle of “Always Places to eat First”, delivering reasonably priced options in a transparent final results-dependent format. This enables each F&B operator to earn utmost generate at small expenditures.

Struggles from shifting to a profits-sharing design

Again in 2014, Oddle’s first company model was based mostly on a membership mechanic to support the F&B sector to adopt electronic methods for their shipping and delivery and takeout organization. Their brand name brand was that of a mouse, symbolising how dining places can make gross sales with just a click. 

Despite the fact that this contributed to their commercial results, Jonathan realised that their set-membership design contributed to the challenge where by restaurant homeowners or F&B operators are typically confronted with complex processes and fixed-high priced membership costs for incorporating expert services like deliveries, takeaways, e-shops, reservations and more into their organization, not to mention the troubles in owning to deal with multiple associates as very well.

As this kind of, Oddle pivoted toward a income-sharing product in 2019, though making sure their own economic sustainability was carefully tied to the good results of their partners. This paramount shift helped split the mould when remaining nearer to their roots in the business. 

Deciding on to give up our original thriving small business model and pivoting to the existing service provider-aligned just one was a person of the greatest problems we experienced to confront, as this meant we have been offering up a protected and regular profits stream, and it was anything really difficult for a enterprise to do.

But we felt it experienced to be finished since a fastened membership cost does not encourage us to place our attempts into ensuring that our companions can prosper, given that they would be having to pay us the same quantity regardless of how effectively, or terribly, they do.

– Jonathan Lim, Founder and CEO of Oddle

All through the pandemic in 2020, the new enterprise design resulted in important gains thanks to the spike in on line deliveries from the pandemic, encouraging numerous dining establishments change their business about in 24 hrs.

“[W]e leveraged the decrease of the actual physical F&B landscape by ensuring that firms are transitioning effectively into the on the net sphere”, Jonathan notes.

Inspite of the pandemic long lasting for a number of a long time, Oddle remained ahead-searching, and sought to anticipate difficulties in a post-pandemic economic system by further producing its comprehensive suite of holistic on-line-to-offline remedies to long term-evidence the growth of their F&B partners in the region, which also served to ensure Oddle’s continued commercial viability.

This sort of options contain obtaining reservations in preparation for the return of the dine-in crowds, and giving payment terminals for the shops underserved by traditional payment companies.

Suffering from exponential growth

To day, Oddle’s Gross Products Volume (GMV) has grown from S$30 million in 2019, to S$200 million in 2021. Their profits has also increased around 10 instances in the identical period of time, and is now “capital-efficient”. 

Jonathan highlights that these figures remained strong in the to start with 50 percent of 2022, even as COVID limitations have been in the midst of becoming lifted.

With the relaxation of pandemic measures and Oddle’s enlargement of their dine-in repertoire of products, they skilled a surge in traction for their dine-in payment terminals, which aided to conquer the slight decrease in shipping GMV.

In their journey of furnishing complete-evidence O2O remedies to F&B companions, Jonathan shares that the 430 merchants employing Oddle’s reservations options are currently reaching an impressive 150,000 handles, even though 350 new retailers have taken up Oddle’s supply and takeaway place. 

1 these kinds of success story is Pizza Convey. It originally delivered their consumers with table ordering, in-retail store payments, reservations and shipping and delivery with several via fragmented and costly platforms.

“We recognised the chance to streamline these data touchpoints with our omnichannel products and services, boosting Pizza Express’s profitability to realize larger delivery margins from optimised supply settings”, Jonathan highlights.

With Oddle, Pizza Specific was furnished with an straightforward, thorough access to a additional strong Customer Connection Administration (CRM) database with up-to-day supply and dine-in info, resulting in a 23 per cent reduction of labour hrs and a sizeable yearly discounts of S$50,000.

Just final month, Oddle elevated US$5 million in its Pre-Series B spherical, bringing its whole funding to around US$12 million (S$16.78 million). With this newest round of funding, it plans to greatly enhance products enhancement and regional sector enlargement in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

In accordance to Jonathan, some aspects of Oddle — these kinds of as takeaway, QR buying and reservations — are planned to penetrate new markets with a self-provide model. 

“This yr, we will go on to cost in advance with our “Always Restaurants First” philosophy and go further into furnishing more remedies to F&B retailers,” he provides.

Featured image credit rating: Oddle