Every Singaporean loves food, judging from the popularity of Singapore food bloggers such as superadrianme to the recent sale of hungrygowhere to Singtel for SGD12 million. But did you know about the technology that goes on behind the scenes, in order for local food websites to show you the latest must-go places to eat? We speak to co-founders of startup food editorial Six&Seven to find out more.
Website
Founded in October of 2011 by 24-year-old Jasper Lim and 23-year-old Saunders Shen, the new kid on the block has already made ripples in the local food writing community. Nominated as one of the top ten finalists for a 2012 Singapore Blog Award in the Food category, this fiercely independent site takes no prisoners with its often delightfully ruthless reviews of local dining establishments.
Attracting a strong readership base of mainly urban professionals and executives, Six&Seven has also been invited to cover major local culinary events, such as the Singapore Restaurant Week, World Gourmet Summit and the upcoming Singapore Food Festival.
Food review sites are inherently visually-based, says co-founder Jasper. Visitors to such sites enjoy looking at photographs of meals either to suss out where to eat or simply enjoy the aesthetics of good food. Short, witty copy doesn’t hurt either. The site was coded with Eclipse, a free HTML editor, utilising Javascript for its dynamic elements such as the interactive slider on the top of the page, featuring latest posts about restaurants.
“It was hard to manually adjust coding to ensure the photographs were all scaled properly when they rendered,” says Jasper. Hosted by US-based server Hostgator, Six&Seven runs on the popular WordPress platform, using free native plugins such as Jetpack to monitor daily traffic. Other plugins used include SEO tools WordPress SEO and WordPress PopUp.
Photography
As for the glossy images that accompany the food review, Jasper used to use a Canon Digital IXUS 870 IS, finally upgrading to a Sony NEX-5 last year. Saunders relies on his trusty Sony NEX-C3.
Their favourite models of camera lenses include the standard SEL1855 kit lens and SEL50F18, which they say are suitable for both food photography and the occasional “portrait-of-the-chef” shot.
Photos taken are edited using CS6 – an often tedious process that takes a few hours. Although some may question the ethics of retouching, it is a necessary evil as the two founders report that lighting at the location of the review is often not ideal for publication.
Social Media
As a small local startup, Six&Seven has relied heavily on social media for its publicity pushes. Jasper says Facebook helps drive traffic to the site, whilst Twitter is more of a tool to connect with their readers.
Potential social platforms for expansion also include Burpple and Feecha. Another platform that food websites might not immediately think of using is Instagram, suggests Jasper. The popular service already has a wealth of existing users, and its image-sharing function lends itself to food photography. Hashtags such as #sgfood also help users find relevant content.
While finding writers with a similar style and passion proves difficult, Six&Seven exclusively lets on that they will expanding their current two-man operation and branching out into entertainment with a soon-to-be-launched movie review section. Be sure to check out all these exciting developments on their site at http://six-and-seven.com/.
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