Battle of the Nomz

Opening a successful restaurant is never easy, but in ultra-competitive South Korea it may be more difficult than in other places.  To varying degrees, new start ups and uses of information technology are trying to help out:

"Blue Night, another Korean start-up, was founded by a pub owner. Kim Yong-jin, CEO of the company who started a pub after quitting his job as a researcher at Samsung Electronics, realized that keeping track of the clock in and out times of employees and their payrolls was harder than he imagined. That is why the CEO created an application called Albam, which automatically records employee attendance, shifts and the wages. Used by more than 100,000 businesses, the application calculates actual payroll by taking legally-mandated paid holiday hours, social insurance and tax deduction into account. The service is free for private businesses.

'Collaboration of the food service industry and start-ups with data base AI technology can enhance the chance of survival for those starting new businesses as not only tastes but improving customer service can lead to "good business,"' said Hong Tae-ho, professor of business administration at Pusan National University."

Optimistically, there are some good ideas here.  Realistically, location location location will always outweigh any cutting edge app.