World’s leading food service company Sysco to set up captive innovation centre in Colombo

CAKE LABS recently announced that its parent company Sysco Corporation will move forward with plans to setup a technology innovation centre in Sri Lanka. The announcement follows a recent visit to Sri Lanka by Sysco leadership comprising of Wayne Shurts – Executive Vice President and CTO, Brian Beach – President of Sysco Ventures and Wesley Story – Vice President of Sales and Marketing Technology. 

In the course of their visit the Sysco executives were able to witness first-hand the skills and capabilities of the CAKE LABS teams responsible for engineering the CAKE technology platform which is distributed throughout the US. The decision to launch the innovation centre came about as a result of the engineering expertise resident within CAKE LABS which has made the company a technology powerhouse in Sri Lanka. Additionally, Sysco aims to leverage CAKE LABS’s proven ability to hire highly skilled resources that can form the nucleus of a world class entity that will undertake the next generation of Sysco’s innovation projects. The Sysco Innovations team in Sri Lanka will also be supported by an on-site team of Product Managers and Architects located out of Austin, Texas. 

Commenting further on the announcement Shanil Fernando, SVP of Engineering for CAKE LABS said, “The launch of the Sysco Innovation Centre is a true testament to the amazing work that has been done by the team and it speaks volumes of the capabilities of Sri Lanka. I am very proud that a Fortune 100 company which has partners around the world chose to do this in Sri Lanka. This is a substantial achievement for the industry and country.”

Sysco’s distribution network is far reaching, from suppliers, to restaurant operators, to consumers. CAKE LABS is already developing technology that is revolutionising the way restaurants and consumers interact in that value chain. 

Wayne Shurts commented, “We were delighted to see the potential that the CAKE LABS team had to offer; the quality of the engineering talent we saw was very impressive. We hope to further increase our focus on innovation in the coming years and CAKE LABS will be a key asset to us in this journey.”

CAKE LABS has already commenced the build-out of a new state of the art facility and the operation is set to commence before the end of 2016. The new centre will initially house 80 persons and is estimated to scale further in 2017.