For most consumers today, checking online content to decide whether to visit a restaurant has become a usual practice. Therefore, one of the most challenging tasks for restaurant owners might not be serving delicious signature dishes, but rather putting effort and time into managing social media platforms to attract potential guests' attention and encourage them to walk through their restaurants' doors.
As a third-generation family member in the restaurant business, Eric Fung deeply understands restaurant owners' pain points. Drawing on 15 years of experience in the tech industry in Silicon Valley and his entrepreneurial spirit, he founded Colega AI with partners, and leverages AI technology to provide solutions that help restaurant owners easily manage social media platforms and create promotional content. Starting with Taiwan as the base, the startup is gaining growth support from TTA and SparkLabs Taiwan, and achieving some success in the market.
"I've been in the AI industry since 2018, and we've seen so much progression in AI, especially with ChatGPT coming out and all those technologies." Eric, the Co-founder & CEO of Colega AI, said, "I'd like to see how I can combine my knowledge in AI and apply it to Industries that still need to be innovative and catch up to modern technology, and what better industry than the industry that I grew up in?"
According to Eric's observations and experience, most restaurant operators do not understand new technologies or think it will be quite difficult to learn how to use them, particularly small and medium-sized businesses with tight human resources. Therefore, his philosophy is to provide AI tools that are easy to use even for those who do not know technology, allowing restaurant owners to focus on what they do best: providing delicious food and a welcoming atmosphere for their guests.
Colega AI's users don't need to know programming or go through the cumbersome process of registering, obtaining an account, and filling out numerous forms. They just need to connect with Colega via instant messenger like LINE or WhatsApp, link their social media accounts, and gain an exclusive 24/7 Social Media Manager who creates engaging content to attract online attention for their restaurant.
Building exclusive AI model for the F&B industry
Of course, the effort and technical expertise required to create such a simple and user-friendly tool is beyond what the end users can imagine. In creating an AI assistant specifically for restaurant owners, Colega chose open-source large language models as the foundation and retrained them with the datasets collected by themselves. During the initial launch phase of Colega's service, they also did extensive manual work on the model fine-tuning to ensure the correct and fluent language they provide, especially the Traditional Chinese used in Taiwan.
"We take a very careful approach to train our AI model, it's because we want our AI-powered social media manager to be like you're essentially talking to a Taiwanese person." Eric explained, "So everything we do revolves around that. One of the big features that Colega AI can do is proactively tell you, give you ideas or suggestions of what to post, and the data sources come from what's happening around you in Taiwan."
For example, if an international superstar recently came to Taiwan, Colega's users will get a message and give suggestions to create a post to capitalize on this hot topic. "So, we have to understand the local events and trends, even the weather. When it comes down to language, we don't just do a lot of manual work at the moment to make sure that the tone, slang, and phrases or grammar are consistent with the everyday language used by people in Taiwan. We can also learn the users' habitual expressions and preferences from their social media posts to create personalized content for them. It takes a lot of work, but we plan to apply this standard and approach to every international market we enter. It's about respecting each country's nuances," Eric added.
Establishing a foothold and expanding to broader markets
Colega AI is still in a very early stage. The team is currently gaining experience and continuously improving service quality through close collaboration with both independent restaurants and restaurant chains based in Taiwan. According to Eric, Colega AI offers its services through a monthly or annual subscription. In addition to providing suggestions for social media content posts, the company can also offer customized reports on post engagement and follower analysis. This allows F&B operators to gain valuable insights into how social media tools can help their business.
Currently, Colega AI's services are already operating in Taiwan and the United States through LINE and WhatsApp. The startup also plans to enter Japan, where social media marketing and LINE usage are prevalent, and they have already received ongoing interest from restaurants there and across Asia. As for other industries beyond the F&B business that also need social media management, Eric mentioned that while Colega AI hopes to serve a broader market, building datasets and training custom models for specific industries is a demanding task. Therefore, the team will first focus on the areas they are familiar with, and establish a solid foothold before considering longer-term future developments.
