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The key to Singapore's scalability issues is serving customer needs profitably, says Hungrygowhere's Frank Young

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By Benjamin Cher, Reporter

May 17, 2017 | 5 min read

One of Singapore’s pioneer food listing site, Hungrygowhere just celebrated its 10th anniversary, just five years after its acquisition by local telco Singtel.

Frank Young

How will Hungrygowhere maintain its logeivity in a space where novelty is king?

This is a rarity in a space where novelty is king, and one that is crowded by food bloggers and other food listings/user generated reviews sites.

Hungrygowhere then has been a stalwart through the evolution of Singapore’s food media, being the first to do food listings and user generated reviews, according to Frank Young, chief executive officer, Hungrygowhere Singapore.

Following a consumer evolution, it has led the site into new grounds such as online reservations, according to Young.

“As the young people grew up, accustomed to ordering pizza delivery online, they enter the work market and they start to say; ‘I want better things besides pizza, I want to do reservations, I want to do delivery,’” said Young.

“We’ve seen this evolution happen in the last few years as the generational change starts to occur. Consumer behaviour is changing and going to become more digitally oriented. Everyone in Singapore has access to [smart]phones and everything can be done online,” he added.

This has resulted in the food portal evolving with the time as well, offering a whole suite of services, from reservations to delivery and takeaway, for both customers and merchants.

“A lot of people don’t realise we actually serve two markets. One is the consumer, where we have a million readers come to our site every month to check out restaurant reviews and post their own reviews,” said Young.

“The other group is the restaurants. The way I see it is we’re like a dating app bringing together two parties; people who love food and people who offer food. We let people do their research and let them choose how they want to ‘date’ each other, and so forth,” he added.

Ad man at the helm

Hungrygowhere’s Young has a different background from what you’d expect from a ceo, living life as an ad man before joining Hungrygowhere.

“I started out in J. Walter Thompson as an art director, doing a lot of great campaigns and winning awards. I also rose to the top and became managing director of Crush Singapore,” said Young.

“The good thing about working in advertising is that you get a sense of what our clients want for the business. What I bring to this table here at Hungrygowhere is exactly the same type of sensitivity; how do we serve the need of the people profitably?” he added.

In fact, his ad man experience gives him the perspective to know “how consumer needs are met and how can we make profit from it.”

Being a former ad man, it's no surprise that there are plans to see Hungrygowhere ramp up its campaigns and marketing activities, which were not active as of late.

“We will be actively engaging, moving into the new year, we have a PR campaign rolling out throughout the year, we also have a marcom campaign moving forward as well,” said Young.

What’s next

While Hungrygowhere is currently available in Singapore and Malaysia, there are plans to expand in the region according to Young.

“We’re speaking to a few potential partners in moving abroad, we are in discussion and are looking for people with like minded goals and skillsets in other markets where we can collaborate,” said Young.

This leads on to the challenge that Hungrygowhere faces in remaining just in Singapore and Malaysia, as the Singapore market is small, according to Young.

“With technology the key is scalability, but inherently this market is so small there is no scalability. That’s why you can’t get the kind of scale you would if you spent 'x amount' on technology if you were in the US; 350m people, that’s easy to actually make money from that,” said Young.

“Here, the adult population you’re looking at tops three million, which is very difficult to expand beyond that,” he added.

In addition, with fierce competition Young believes that his ad man experience will be key in charting Hungrygowhere’s future.

“Ultimately it all boils down to again, not how many technology things we create, but how do we serve the consumers’ needs best and most profitably, that’s the number one goal, we’re working for the next few years,” he said.

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