Mr Yum started here

You wouldn’t be alone in guessing that Mr Yum, the mobile ordering and payments app that’s greatly improved the hospitality industry, was thought up by hospitality people.

But founder Kim Teo wasn’t working in hospitality when she came up with the idea. Instead, like a lot of us in Victoria, she was, and still is, a foodie.

Kim’s always been one to look up menu options on Instagram before going out to eat, as foodies often do. And that sparked her idea. What if all diners could access beautiful, tantalising photos of everything on a menu with their phones? People know what to do with a QR code, so Kim and her co-founders decided to create a visual menu that people could look at simply by scanning one.

Creating the visual menu was one thing, but understanding the challenges the hospitality industry faces was another. Kim and her cofounders surrounded themselves with leaders from the Victorian hospitality scene for inspiration and support, as they worked to figure out how their idea could help address high costs, low margins, and lack of staff.

The team tested their visual menus at a couple of cafes in Collingwood, an area bustling with creative and curious people. They developed a fail metric: if less than 5 percent of customers scanned the QR code, they’d drop the idea. But over the next 3 weeks, the response was overwhelmingly positive, and the figure was 5 times higher without any prompting. The visual menu idea evolved into a web-based mobile ordering and payment platform, and their tech was rolled out across 170 pubs, bars, and event
spaces around the country.

Kim was happy to be able to support industry trade through Melbourne’s long lockdown periods. Mr Yum helped more than 500 venues with delivery capability when they were suddenly limited to takeaway service only.

Kim feels that it’s a real privilege to work in an industry filled with passionate people who truly love what they do, especially in Melbourne, a city with such a dynamic and exciting food culture.

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