Colega AI: Creating an Exclusive AI Editor for Restaurants
When searching for a restaurant, do you open a search engine or Google Maps? For Gen Z, they turn to Instagram or TikTok. According to Forbes, 67% of young people aged 18 to 24 choose Instagram as their preferred platform for searching information. This means that restaurant owners need to actively manage their social media presence to capture the attention of young consumers.
However, for many small, inexperienced restaurant owners, creating content for social media can be a daunting task. Social media marketing is more than just posting content; it also involves storytelling and image building to create a unique appeal for your brand.
Enter Colega AI, a tool designed to create a dedicated “AI editor” for restaurants. It automatically generates customized text and images based on the restaurant’s brand tone, target audience, and latest news, using publicly available information. This allows even small restaurants with no social media experience to easily attract attention and tell their own story.
Understanding the pain points of restaurant operations, how does Colega AI assist in managing social media effortlessly?
Social media has become a battleground for the food and beverage industry, but for many small businesses, managing social media is a difficult hurdle to overcome.
“81% of consumers use social media to learn about restaurants before deciding whether to dine there,” says Colega AI founder Feng Jianxin. Many restaurant owners recognize the importance of social media but lack the knowledge and tools to effectively use it to promote their brand and attract customers.
With 15 years of experience in Silicon Valley, Feng Jianxin co-founded AI company Basilica, which was selected for Y Combinator in 2019. With his background in the tech industry and owning multiple restaurants in the US, including bringing the Taiwanese bubble tea brand “Tea For You” to California, he understands the pain points of restaurant owners.
Feng Jianxin previously outsourced social media management to professionals. However, he found that these outsourced personnel often lacked understanding of the product and brand tone, resulting in ineffective brand differentiation through posts. Moreover, most social media management tools on the market are expensive and complex, making it difficult for small businesses to meet their needs.
Therefore, Feng Jianxin decided to create Colega AI based on his own experience. This tool acts as a dedicated “AI editor” that automatically generates customized text and images based on the restaurant’s brand tone, target audience, and latest news. It helps restaurant owners easily capture customer attention and enhance the effectiveness of social media promotion.
From content generation to post scheduling, everything is handled by the “AI editor”
Using Colega AI is simple. Users just need to enter the restaurant’s name, address, and link their social media accounts. The system will automatically redirect them to Colega AI’s LINE chat room, where users can request promotional information and the system will generate the content accordingly. If users have no ideas, they can also ask the system to recommend post ideas based on the restaurant’s location or current events.
Once the content is confirmed, users can choose the publishing time, and Colega AI will automatically publish it to the specified social media platforms. Additionally, the tool allows businesses to generate 30 unique and timely posts at once, making it easy to plan a month’s worth of marketing materials.
Colega AI analyzes the restaurant’s customer reviews on Google Maps and engagement data on social media to accurately generate posts that align with the brand tone. By understanding customer preferences and needs through these insights, Colega AI automatically generates content and images that match the brand tone.
In addition to providing automatic content generation and publishing features, Colega AI also integrates with Facebook and Instagram platforms, allowing businesses to post directly on both platforms without manually switching between them.
Feng Jianxin recalled that it took the team four months to convince Meta to support their venture, which was not easy. The biggest challenge was to make Meta believe that Colega AI could help their users and ensure that the generated content would not violate any rules, such as violence, within the community.
“The needs of large companies and small restaurants are completely different. If we simplify the tools used by large companies for small businesses, they will have a hard time adapting,” says Feng Jianxin. From the beginning, the team focused on the needs of small businesses and ensured that Colega AI was simple and easy to use by personally engaging with these small restaurant owners.
A multidisciplinary team building Colega AI, providing AI-driven social media marketing solutions for restaurants
The Colega AI team consists of members from different fields with diverse experiences and skills. They believe that with their complementary strengths, they can not only help restaurant owners manage their social media effortlessly but also have confidence in expanding Colega AI to the global market.
Why did Colega AI choose to start in Taiwan instead of the US?
“Food is an integral part of Taiwanese culture, and any industry or research related to food presents an opportunity,” says Xu Ziting, Colega AI’s Head of Marketing. Xu Ziting, who previously worked as a marketing manager for Uber Eats, has 10 years of experience in food and beverage marketing, having been involved in the launch of Uber Eats in Taiwan and later served as the Business Development Manager for China, Singapore, and the Asia-Pacific region.
During the early stages of the startup, Feng Jianxin realized the need for a partner who understands the Asian market. Upon hearing Colega AI’s entrepreneurial concept, Xu Ziting was immediately attracted and joined the team, believing in the shared goal of using technology to help the food and beverage industry.
In addition to Taiwan’s thriving food and beverage industry and diverse culinary culture, Colega AI chose Taiwan as its startup base for thoughtful reasons.
Feng Jianxin stated that Taiwan has a complete AI industry chain with abundant resources, including GPUs, chips, and hardware equipment. Furthermore, Taiwan has many talented individuals in the tech field, allowing Colega AI’s technical team to grow rapidly. Lastly, Taiwan’s mature startup ecosystem provides a favorable development environment for startup companies.
Currently, in addition to receiving support from SparkLabs Taiwan, a startup accelerator and venture capital fund, Colega AI has already partnered with six restaurants. Although the product has not officially launched, they plan to collaborate with retail software for more diverse services. They also plan to enter the Japanese market next year to assist more food and beverage businesses in online marketing.
As the influence of social media in the food and beverage industry continues to grow, Colega AI is using technology to create new possibilities for traditional restaurants, helping small businesses easily capture attention, tell their own stories, and achieve success in the digital age.
Quick Q&A for startups:
Q: What are the most common questions asked by customers or investors? How do you respond to them?
The most common question we are asked is: Why are you focusing on restaurant owners instead of developing AI for corporations? AI has been around for a while, but most tools are designed for white-collar workers or tech-savvy businesses. However, at Colega AI, we believe that AI should be accessible even to owners who are not tech-savvy and designed to solve their problems.
Q: What resources does your team currently lack to achieve the next goal?
We are currently in the process of fundraising, and the funds will help us build the core founding team, accelerate product development, and provide sufficient resources for marketing.
Q: What has entrepreneurship taught you? Share a brief reflection on your experience since starting your venture.
When building a tech startup, your vision should be driven by the problems you want to solve, not the technology you want to use. So, instead of building the best technology and finding applications for it, you should first identify a pressing problem and then build the best technology to solve it.
Q: What are the top three things you have done well since starting the venture?
We were selected to join the SparkLabs accelerator.
We developed an AI solution that automates social media marketing tasks through natural language chat technology on LINE, requiring no technical background.
We created a recommendation engine specifically for restaurant owners, providing ideas for customized marketing content based on key data that may impact customers, such as local events, weather, news, and hot topics.
Team Information:
Company Name: Colega AI
Established: 2023
Product Name: The world’s first AI editor exclusively for restaurants
Official Website: [website]