It was a case of necessity being the mother of invention for Find My Rice, the newest and most comprehensive hospitality search engine in the world.
“I wanted an onion roll,” laughs Find My Rice CEO Dominic Cain (pictured), one of three founders of the business.
“I couldn’t remember the name of the brand I had used before and it was almost impossible to find through Google or an existing directory with so few details.”
That experience convinced Cain there had to be an easier way to connect people with products, a site which listed everything you needed in hospitality and where to get it. It was from these musings that Find My Rice was born.
What is Find My Rice looking to achieve?
Currently in the lean start-up phase, the vision for the company is big with an anticipated $40 million turnover within the next five years.
Dominic has literally put everything he has on the line to see his vision come to life, including quitting his job and selling his home in order to finance the project!
How’s that for gutsy, eh?
“We currently offer a freemium model but we have our sights set on diversifying from simply being a search-engine to developing an e-commerce site. It is from this platform that we attribute much of our projected revenue growth figures.
“We believe there is huge potential in this space, but we’ve chosen to roll out the full offering in stages and not bite off more than we can chew.
“An exemplary customer experience remains at the core of our business so we want to ensure that the service never suffers from the wobbles of getting ‘too big too fast’,” Cain enthuses.
The founding team turned to web giants such as Google, LinkedIn and YouTube as examples of companies representing the same core values they hold, as well as inspiration for their burgeoning business.
The team researched the history of these companies in an effort to emulate the growth strategies they employed, as well as the methods they used for customer acquisition, platform development and diversification.
How exactly does Find My Rice work?
“Find My Rice is the only global platform in the industry,” Cain says. “From chef to manufacturer, the site caters for the whole industry. We want it to become the central point of reference for any product for new and established hospitality businesses alike.”
The Find My Rice team are looking to revolutionise the hospitality industry by linking suppliers, producers, business owners and customers together in one place.
Utilising intuitive technology, the search engine uses a series of algorithms to analyse every search criteria. The site ensures customers find the specific product they want, but have taken it a step further by ensuring the algorithm also has the capability to return complimentary products and companies associated with the search criteria.
Another key point of difference for the sophisticated search engine is that searches are not limited just to categories, it also searches by grouped key words.
This in an effort to get away from needing to know the specific name of a product in order to find it and to also give users and suppliers more opportunities to discover new products.
Find My Rice is free for users. Companies have the choice to create a complimentary profile and list products, or they can take advantage of advanced profile capabilities which enable special reporting, search preferences, key word selection and advertising.
With over 300,000 companies and two million products listed already – and a goal to list over 600,000 companies by the end of 2015 – Find My Rice is set to be one hot start-up that will shift the industry forever.
