The Industry Transformation Programme aims to lays out growth and transformation strategies for Singapore’s 23 key industries over the next five years.
“We must develop a food services industry that is highly efficient, with no loss in quality of food offerings, and with high quality jobs. It has to be a major makeover,” said Tharman Shanmugaratnam, deputy prime minister and coordinating minister for economic and social policies, speaking at the concurrent launches of Select Group’s corporate headquarters and the food services ITM.
Key features of the food services ITM include developing innovative formats like Ready-to-Eat meals and promoting mass adoption of technologies, like embracing digital service, including electronic payments.
The food services ITM, together with the retail, food manufacturing and hotel ITMs, fall under the Lifestyle cluster. Senior minister of state Ms Sim Ann and managing director of Select Group Mr Vincent Tan will co-chair a team of industry practitioners and unionists to oversee the implementation of the ITMs for the Lifestyle cluster.
Mr Shanmugaratnam mentioned that the food industry sees a high churn of enterprises, with an average of 28 percent of food establishments replaced yearly.
He added, “Some churn in the industry is not a bad thing — it adds vibrancy, and reflects Singaporeans wanting to do their own thing as entrepreneurs… To stay competitive, companies will need to embrace change in both the front and back of the business — every way of reducing the manpower required.”
The food services ITM aims to have at least 50 percent of the industry adopt technology-enabled operations by 2020, and aims to have productivity growth in food services of two percent per year on average from now till 2020.
