Wahyoo: Combining Technology, Tradition, and Innovation to Support Micro Eateries in Jakarta

Jakarta is home to thousands of very small eateries - mom-and-pop restaurants called "warung makan." These tiny spaces, often no more than nine square meters, serve traditional food and are an integral part of life in Indonesian cities.

However, it's not an easy existence for owners: They have to attend to their kitchens and customers plus a range of other daily duties, relying on themselves or family members to keep their micro-enterprises afloat.

Indonesian entrepreneur Peter Shearer has experienced the lifestyle personally, helping out at a catering business owned by his mother, whom he labels “the best chef in the world”. This experience combined with his equal passions for the food industry and technology led him to create Wahyoo, a new mobile phone application to help warung makan, and warteg, the popular generic name of warung makan in Jakarta, in their daily operations. The application groups wholesale and other orders together from thousands of small eateries, creating economies of scale that cut costs for users and and reliability to supply chains.

“We are helping the micro sector that really needs our help, as they are family businesses, often passed on from one generation to the next,” said Mr. Shearer. “We want to help them improve their status, their living standard.”

Peter Shearer defines himself as a serial entrepreneur. The 38 years old, who founded Wahyoo, an innovative digital start-up in 2017 was only 22 when he started his first company called Black and White (a uniform company). This was followed by a small restaurant, a catering business, a magic store, a culinary web platform, mobile app developement, and an augmented reality company (AR&Co), for which Fortune Magazine listed him as Fortune 40 under 40.

He left AR&Co in 2017 to pursue his vision for Wahyoo, a name he chose from the Indonesian word “wahyu”, which means “revelation”. The bright yellow background of the website is meant to be inspirational to small eateries owners: “Making sure you have a bright future."

Digitizing small eateries’ operations, COVID-19 push

The application, now used by some 17,000 warteg businesses, seeks to help micro-businesses operations, run by family members, often waking up at 2 or 3 am to prepare their groceries and raw material orders. The app allows them to buy their supplies and raw material on their phone, such as vegetables, eggs, rice, and cooking oil, which are then delivered at their doorstep, “so they can focus on cooking and serving their customers,” Mr. Shearer explained.

Wahyoo also offers financing support to mitigate the difficulties for the micro sector to access traditional financing. A “pay later” system allows the owners to delay the payment of their supplies. Wayhoo also helps warteg businesses establish savings plans so that they can invest later.

So far, Wayhoo has proven to be his most successful endeavor “because it has the most impact on people," says Mr. Shearer: “For me, a company or business is about bringing impact.”

Although Jakarta’s small eateries did not have to close as the result of the COVID-19 crisis, the restriction measures gave Wahyoo new reasons to attract digital-reluctant warteg owners. “Now is the right time to push them to have digital operations,” he said. Wahyoo is helping its customers with COVID-19 protocols, hand disinfecting, masks, digital payments, and by establishing partnerships with online delivery services.

Business model, new perception

Wahyoo does not charge warteg owners for the application. Its revenues come from the margin taken on the raw material it supplies. Because Wayhoo can use economies of scale, it can offer cheaper prices to its clients and is constantly seeking new partners to support its model.

Wayhoo also launched its own privately labeled products, sold to warteg, allowing them to serve more diversified menus to their clients, introducing ice cream, as one example.

The last stream of revenue comes from transaction fees from financing services granted to the eateries.

Now staffed with 170 people, Wahyoo manages its warehouses but relies on third parties partners for deliveries, in greater Jakarta, where Wahyoo currently operates.

The Wayhoo Academy provides training to warteg owners on finance, hygiene and customer services - operations suspended during the pandemic.

The future, importance of trademark, food innovations next

Even before formally launching Wahyoo, fully aware of the importance of branding for his company, Mr. Shearer registered his trademark. “I have a lot of respect for people’s ideas,” he noted, and the importance of protecting them.

“In our business, [additional IP protection] will be coming from food innovation, as we are now creating our own menus, which makes us unique.”

For the future, fueled by optimism and his innovative spirit, Mr. Shearer has a slate of new objectives. The first is to expand beyond greater Jakarta and reach cities across Indonesia. The next step will be to establish a presence in other countries, including Thailand, Malaysia, and the Philippines, whose small eateries are also in need of operational help, he says.

However, above all, he wants to, gain greater international recognition of Indonesian food, like that enjoyed by Thai, Chinese, or Italian cuisine. “I want to make Indonesian food famous - it is very good, spicy, and very popular.”