Lourdes Colom
Loreto Tainta Arcas
Marta Diaz
Iranzu Artaso
Universidad de Navarra
Isabel Rodriguez Tejedo
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Horeca App allows both clients and companies to know which type of allergens contain the different dishes that are offered in restaurants, hotels, etc. This way, it provides useful information for people who have allergies, diabetes, obesity and even for those who just want to know what they eat to follow a healthy diet. Providing this information was not compulsory before the implementation of a special EU regulation.
The app is very useful in the sense that it lets you keep track of what you eat in a very accurate way, as it shows the different ingredients that are present in a concrete dish and with a formula, it adds them up to let you know all the properties that a concrete dish has (ex: a dish of rice has gluten, vitamin D, etc.). For example, when you eat lentils and afterwards a yogurt, it will tell you that you will 'lose' the iron you have eaten.
Besides, it tells you how much time of physical activity you need in order to burn all the calories that you have eaten.
By doing this, it provides a solution for the problem that arose when the EU regulation established that it was mandatory to inform the consumer about the allergens of each product.
This app was founded in order to give a solution to the new European rule (Regulation EU 1169/2011) in which they made it compulsory to give accurate information about food’s allergens offered by restaurants and other food services.
Moreover, this kind of app would give the consumer more transparency in terms of having a nutritional control whenever they eat out of their homes. It is becoming more usual to find consumers looking for a restaurant with Horeca app which fill their necessities. Horeca app offers three types of packages depending on what the client wants to offer to their clients. In four years the market has grown 30% due to the implementation of the Regulation UE 1169/2011 in Spain. Also, the largest part of the clients are companies that work in different countries with a customized app that costs 60€ per month per group. The costs of Horeca app are stable and only increases because of the hiring of new workers in order to adapt to the new number of clients.
Nowadays, the total number of clients rose to 1,000 during 2015 and it is expected that in 2020 Horeca app will be implanted in more than 18,000 establishments.
On the other hand, Horeca app provides the restaurant with some recognition which makes them differentiate from the other restaurants that don’t offer this kind of personalized service. The user registers the personal allergies and the app alerts you so as to which dishes may not be consumed, so this gives the consumer a more secure service.
This application has a very positive impact not only on the world of culinary business, in terms of competitiveness marketing, etc. but also in the health area, improving the consumer’s life standards.
It helps to take care of ourselves in an easier way, no matter what you are looking for: you are allergic to nuts and just want information, you are overweight and want to follow a diet, or you just want to be healthy and know better what you are actually eating.
For the firm, it allows to increase its users and clients without the necessity of hiring more employees because once they have registered you and make you personalize your profile, the app does the rest. But, what does this imply? And, why is it better than general nutritional advices? Because just by solving some sum operations of the production process of the specific meal the customer is about to eat he will automatically know if the dish is contaminated and the information, cautions and advices he/she needs to know about himself.
In other areas this innovation helps to incentive local products, as Horeca App takes into account if you are consuming this kind of products and the advantages you obtain of them. In the same way, we can say it is a success in developing tourism, as it works in 7 different languages.
"The business itself is the innovation" expresses Gabriel, "so this means that each update on the scientific wordings or every time we create a personalized ingredient table for a specific hotel or restaurant we can use this information to incorporate in their information cloud for future use, it is a win win model".
Horeca_App benefits society because now the consumers are the ones who can choose the specific food intake taking into account their health problems or allergies and knowing the specific ingredients that the dishes contain and their nutritional information.
Moreover, "while a tourist is visiting another region he wants to discover it tasting some exotics dishes, but at the same time, assuring themselves to not having a health problem" Gabriel said. This is the reason why the app provides appreciation of using local products and businesses can increase their value using organic food without preservatives or dyes, because the dish will have the delicate flavour of authentic as it used to taste in its origins.
Nowadays, the app is translated in seven different languages, so it tries to improve health information over countries and give tourists the opportunity to know what they are exactly eating during their stays in an exotic country and without understanding the language of the place.
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Gabriel Colom, CEO
Entorn Bioeconomic was created by Gabriel Colom and Antoni Colom and it is divided in two different projects: Horeca App and the Chef module. It was created in 2014 after the European Regulation 1169/2011 in order to satisfy the legal duty of providing information about the allergens in different dishes and to help consumers to be better informed. It also incentives the consumption of local ecological products and is focused on health control for the clients of the restaurants, bars and hotels that use this app.