No flashy robots, just a quiet transformation: How Singapore’s food and retail sectors are using AI
Singapore’s shops and restaurants scoring quick wins with AI
SINGAPORE – Beachside Italian restaurant Fico is pushing its boundaries.
Operator The Lo & Behold Group had held back on overbooking the restaurant’s capacity at East Coast Park as it was worried about long wait times. But this changed in May when it tapped artificial intelligence (AI) to maximise table turnover.
Using Anthropic’s Claude Code, a special project team built an AI tool to analyse historical reservation data, dining durations and guest habits to safely predict periods when Fico could accept more bookings than its capacity allows.
How a missed 2,000-kueh order pushed a heritage Singapore brand to adopt AI
HarriAnns Nonya Table central kitchen staff making moulding kueh bugis in JTC Bedok Food City.
ST PHOTOS: JASEL POH
A phone call from the chef of a major hotel in March 2025 marked a stressful turning point for Alan Tan.
The chief executive officer of heritage food and beverage brand HarriAnns Nonya Table was told a major 2,000-kueh order had been missed.
The firm, which supplies freshly made traditional cakes and dishes to hotels, was supposed to have prepared the food the day before. In Singapore, kueh is a Hokkien dialect term for steamed cakes.
Low on code, high on miles: S’porean uses AI to create tool to maximise credit card rewards
Hosan Swee, creator of KiasuMiles, taught himself to code using artificial intelligence and built the website, which recommends the best credit cards to use at different merchants to maximise airline miles.
ST PHOTO: GAVIN FOO
Managing a dozen shared credit cards to maximise frequent flier miles became a frustrating routine for Hosan Swee and his wife.
With every card offering different rewards for different spending categories, picking the right one at various merchants required laborious mental calculations.
“It’s not life or death, but choosing the wrong one leaves a lot of holiday dollars on the table,” said the 37-year-old founder of AI community and workshop provider The AI Burrow.
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