Meeting the demand for digital and contactless food solutions in China
It has been clear for a long time that there is a strong consumer appetite for digital food solutions. The popularity of digital food services was only going to grow over time.
This case study was originally published on the global Sodexo website
This is clear from this Statista report from 2019.
As a company, we are always looking to add digital food solutions to our range of food services available for our clients and consumers so when our Sodexo Ventures team came across Meican we knew the partnership could work well.
Meican: digital contactless food delivery
Meican is a Chinese technology company focused on digital food solutions in the corporate environment. Meican provides a wide range of digital food service options for multiple company scenarios, each designed to integrate seamlessly within the daily life.
Meican’s portfolio includes an online platform, mobile application, standardized process management and a vast nationwide network that includes partner commercial restaurant merchants and technology-enabled food courts that complements our Onsite restaurant offer.
The Sodexo Ventures, our strategic venture capital fund, invested in Meican in 2019 and the solution is now being piloted in our food service offer in China.
Smart food lockers, cashier-less checkout
Our partnership with Meican has enabled us to test out a new and unique food offer that that complements our existing food services and enriches the consumer experience by digitalizing the food experience.
Since our investment, Meican has innovated in several areas:
- Leveraging the rich ecosystem of the WeChat super-app to develop a mini-program for consumers to place their food orders digitally in a cafeteria.
- Launching a second generation of smart food lockers that are more cost effective than the first-generation lockers, bringing additional cost savings to clients,
- Providing cashier-less checkout system leveraging RFID technology will also be upgraded to leverage dish recognition technology. The new system is currently in the final stages of testing and is expected to be launched this year.
2020: the year of the contactless food solution
Meican’s solutions enable the contactless pre-ordering of meals across multiple devices creating the best dining experiences tailored to different corporate environments.
In taking an open-innovation approach to enhancing our food services, the strength of our partnerships with local Food tech start-ups across the globe, including Meican, has enabled us to be prepared for the growing demand for contactless food solutions, both in China and throughout the rest of the world, which has been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic.
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