By Rosmi Nitasya
18 August 2006

Singapore is a food paradise, and what better way for Singaporeans to find food than to have a one-stop web portal listing all food outlets in the island?

While his classmates were busy securing their first jobs upon graduation, Howard Hu, 24, ventured away from his comfort zone to start a new venture on his own and developed Foodlane.sg.

Launched on July 6, 2006, the web portal functions as a comprehensive search portal for food in Singapore. It also features food reviews of the eateries featured on Foodlane.sg.

Only a month into its inception, Foodlane.sg has already launched a mobile service, Foodlane Mobile, through which users can search for eateries using their mobile phones.

Hu, an NUS School of Computing graduate, said he was motivated to fill a gap in the local online food scene.

“There isn’t any website that actually lets people search for food in detail,” he said. “There also isn’t a common organised place where people can talk about the food they eat.”

“The concept of Foodlane.sg is new and interesting and we decided to give it a try. Not many food websites out there have a portal for people to review eateries,” said Timothy Boay, manager of Pitstop.

Apart from being a search portal, Foodlane.sg also houses community members who can log on to the portal to submit food reviews and check for updates on their favourite eateries.

“Sometimes I introduce Foodlane.sg as a Friendster for food,” Hu said. “Members can log in to My Foodlane to search for other members and have a look at what is in their favourites lists. This creates opportunities for members to mingle.”
Friendster is a popular online social network service that allows people from all over the world to meet, communicate and keep in touch.

To date, Foodlane.sg boasts about 200 community members, with that number set to grow as the popularity of the web portal increases. Hu said this is because Foodlane.sg strives to differentiate itself from other food columns or reviews featured in newspapers, books and on television.

Foodlane.sg gives its community members, whom Hu refers to as “end-users”, a chance to review and recommend any eatery.

“We want the end-users, the ones who actually taste the food to review and recommend,” said Hu.

Anson Tan, a Foodlane.sg community member, has contributed five reviews.

“Foodlane.sg’s review system may only have limited accuracy as everyone’s tastes are different,” Tan said. “However if more and more people gave their reviews, and if we take the average ratings given by them, I'm pretty sure, that average rating will be accurate to most of the consumers.”

When quizzed about how far the venture has steered Hu away from the entrepreneur’s original plan to be a web evangelist promoting the web scene, Hu immediately explains how everything has worked out for him.

“The happiest part of this job is to take the photos,” said Hu, who harbours a passion for photography. “I try to take photos of food from different angles, or ask the vendor to strike an interesting pose.”

For more information on Foodlane.sg, please visit http://foodlane.sg.