At Ming Hing, robots whip up fried rice at a press of a button
Lisa Kriwangko
Singapore
SOME worry that robots will take over jobs in the future, but for Ming Hing, these machines are essential to beat the food and beverage (F&B) industry's labour crunch.
Ming Hing Food - better known by its outlet name Bowl & Bowl - relies on its "robot rice cookers" to serve up a variety of fried rice dishes.
Each dish's recipe is programmed into a "smart card", which lets the robot cooker know the appropriate cooking sequence, temperature and duration needed.
"This ensures every portion of fried rice served is up to a certain standard," said Yang Ming, the founder of Ming Hing Food.
He had been working in Singapore's F&B industry for almost 20 years before he started Ming Hing Food in 2016.
At the time, the company was selling mala stir fry at food courts and coffee shops. However, Mr Yang soon found it difficult to hire skilful chefs as there was a "manpower shortage" in the industry, which he believed was due to Singapore's overreliance on foreign talent.
Looking for a solution, he travelled to China to get a taste of the technological innovations in the F&B industry there. He returned to Singapore almost a year later with a plan to transform his business into the robot-powered fried rice store it is today.
Through trial and error, he worked with a team of programmers to encode his recipes, which ranged from the classic egg fried rice to the more "modern" mentaiko salmon fried rice.
Ming Hing Food also had some help from SME Centre@SCCCI, a collaboration between Enterprise Singapore and the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCCI) that is aimed at helping businesses digitalise.
Mr Yang noted that a business adviser from SME Centre introduced him to investors which helped grow the business.
The centre also played an important role in Bowl & Bowl's marketing strategy and media outreach.
The first Bowl & Bowl outlet opened at Toa Payoh in October last year. With that, Mr Yang also saw a chance to give back to the community.
"It's not easy for seniors to work the daily 10- to 12-hour shifts often seen in F&B. This became one of our objectives, to create more job opportunities for senior citizens," said Mr Yang.
By using the robot cookers, Ming Hing was able to split working hours into more digestible six-hour shifts without compromising the company's product quality and consistency. Employees need only prepare the ingredients and place them in the rice cookers' tray holders.
"Anyone can become a chef through just the press of a button," said Kelvin Chen, Ming Hing's operations manager. "The robots cannot take MC (medical certificate)."
Currently, most of Ming Hing's staff are between 58 and 64 years old, said Mr Yang.
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, Ming Hing opened new Bowl & Bowl outlets at Tai Seng and Lorong Chuan in March and May this year.
Mr Yang said the technology helped relieve the stresses of finding skilled workers amid the pandemic, which has further shrunk the labour pool.
Through the use of the cookers, Ming Hing also managed to achieve around 30 to 35 per cent cost savings, as one employee can operate up to three machines.
Mr Yang is optimistic that the industry will get better with time and that the business can continue to grow.
Staying true to Ming Hing's roots, Mr Yang is currently in the early stages of researching ways to encode mala stir-fry recipes for the robot cooker.
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