HoReCa is the abbreviation used in Europe for the food service industry. The term is a syllabic abbreviation of the words Hotel, Restaurant, and Café.
The first HoReCa Meetup was held on Friday, February 17 at the Innovation Center HUB385 in Zagreb. Organized by Metro Cash & Carry and CRANE, the HoReCa Meetup connected 12 startups with more than 70 Croatian restaurants, hotels and other caterers to strengthen their digital capacity, while connecting startups with potential partners in the business sector, reports HRTurizam on February 18, 2017.
In a keynote speech by Alexander Zumdieck, director of the program METRO Accelerator powered by TechStars, the latest digital and technological trends in the digital sector were presented, along with digital solutions for the HoReCa sector developed by METRO Accelerator.
"Reputize - who has developed an application for customer assessment during their stay in hotels - thanks to their participation in the METRO Accelerator, has doubled the number of hotels they work with. I am pleased to announce that they are interested in entering the Croatian market, and have already made the first step in that direction,” said Alexander Zumdieck, who urged all startups apply for the METRO Accelerator.
Croatian restaurateurs and hoteliers including Hotel Esplanade, pastry shop Amelie, restaurants Agave, Mundoaka and Mano, and startups IncheckIn, Unlimited Communication, and Trakbar from Croatia, presented their products and solutions for business improvement.
Davorin Štetner, president of the Croatian Association of Business Angels, emphasized the importance of the HoReCa Meetup for better detection of startups in the hospitality and tourism sector. Štetner stressed: “We have chosen METRO as a partner because of their business platform which has more than 160,000 small and medium-sized enterprises, which will be available to the Croatian network of business angels in an effort to continue with the development of the startup scene in Croatia.”
“In the agreement of cooperation which was signed between METRO and CRANE, we have defined the common activity as the want to strengthen the digital capacity of SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises). The HoReCa Meetup is the first step in our joint efforts to contribute to the modernization and development of the HoReCa sector and to provide startups access to the professional customers of METRO. We are proud that we are in fact joined by the Zagreb incubator of entrepreneurship as one of the strongest startup incubators in the market,” said Marc Carena, president of METRO Cash & Cary in Croatia.
The event took place at the Innovation Center HUB385, giving startups the opportunity to talk to hoteliers and restaurateurs in an effort to help them present their ideas and discover the technological solutions needed for the Croatian HoReCa sector.
You can view the entire event, in English, in the video below.
