The three start-ups are: Hospitality platform Bellr, which partners brands in promotions and loyalty programme tailoring; Crowdsourcing platform Snooper, with a 35,000-strong Australian community that provides brands with app-collected consumer insights; and efficiency optimisation tool Staybil, which uses both machine learning and mobility to drive organisational improvement.
All three were selected by Coca-Cola Amatil via Xcelerate, the company’s accelerator programme which ran for the first time ever this year.
Xcelerate is in turn a part of Amatil X, which is what Amatil dubs its ‘emerging possibilities platform, designed to identify the best ideas to support our business of today and grow our business of tomorrow’.
“Amatil X is focused on disruptive business models which are enabled by technology,” a Coca-Cola Amatil spokesman told FoodNavigator-Asia.
“The reason for this is that they are easily scalable. So it’s not a focus on technology so much as a focus on disruptive business models.”
“[This refers to] ways of doing things that challenge how we do business today and how we might grow in the future, and most importantly how we continue to delight our customers of today and tomorrow.”
Chris Sullivan, Group Director of Partners and Growth at Amatil added that: “Xcelerate is a great opportunity for us to support the start-up and scale-up sectors and help grow Australia and New Zealand’s community of ideas.”
“Working with Bellr, Snooper and Staybil offers them the chance to pilot products and services in conjunction with an established business. And it gives us the opportunity to test ourselves on how we engage with the start-up community to quickly test new solutions.”
Coca-Cola Amatil added that: “It’s important to note that we specifically look for ideas that advance the customer experience outside of beverages. This is not a program for designing new drinks.”
What this means for the start-ups is a commercial partnership, mentoring, and access to the Coca-Cola Amatil Small Supplier Payment Policy (a new policy ensuring suppliers do not suffer disadvantages due to longer payment terms).
More on Coca-Cola Amatil’s tech focus
Earlier this year, Coca-Cola Amatil also acquired a minority share in TabSquare, a Singaporean tech start-up that provides artificial intelligence-based smart restaurant solutions. The acquisition was made via Amatil X.
“We were impressed by the solution that TabSquare was promoting. […] They have a strong team, a clear business model and ambitious growth plans, which include expanding from their established Singapore base to the whole of the Asia Pacific region,” Sullivan said via the official press release.
TabSquare claims to offer a ‘full suite of solutions’ for ‘any type’ of restaurant dining.
