A team of three undergraduate students from the Computing Laboratory are the winners of the University of Kent Student Innovation 2009 competition. Their winning idea is to create a dynamic web-based service, called 1st Eat, to help local restaurants promote themselves. The team was awarded a prize of £200 with each member also receiving a certificate. Team members, Pritesh Patel, Rishi Ghose and Antony Chia, plan to launch the company in Canterbury later this year.

Their novel idea is to build an online community of users who are interested in food through the use of a suite of web-based collaborative tools. Users will not only be able to access information, they will be able to add content too, for example, recipes and reviews. The service will enable local restaurants to reduce the cost of their advertising and, at the same time, to improve its effectiveness. Customers will benefit through access to a broad range of food-related information about restaurants in their local area.

The Competition, launched in March 2009, forms part of the student innovation zone, which was successful in generating a wide range of ideas from students with various academic backgrounds. The entrants were asked to submit a brief summary of their idea, followed by a presentation to judges and from there the winners were chosen.

All entries were celebrated at an awards ceremony on 18 May, attended by Carole Barron, Director of Innovation and Enterprise for the University and Darryl Watts of award-winning renewable energy company Oil Drum Ltd.. Mr. Watts spoke on the key requirements for developing an innovative idea, as well as giving an excellent demonstration of the one minute pitch and presenting the awards.

The team said:

" We feel that the Ideas Competition has helped move from an idea we had in the pub after lectures one evening to a well thought out plan of how to implement the business. We are excited about getting started over the summer and are thankful to all the support we received throughout the competition from Kent Innovation and Enterprise. We would like to give a special thank you to Tracy Crowther, David Butler and Carol Baron. "

The event took place on the 18 May 2009 at the University of Kent, Canterbury campus.

Published 9 June 2009
Contact: M.L.Bowman@kent.ac.uk