Software industry veteran Doris Yu is the founder of prolific restaurant productivity tool inline, which has revolutionised the restaurant reservations and CRM environment. Founded in 2016, inline emerged as a key player during the critical stages of the pandemic in 2021. During the period when Taiwan was most tightly locked down, inline was instrumental in the continued operations of many Taiwanese restaurants, helping them quickly shift from managing busy dine-in operations to offering takeout and delivery with enough profit margin to help restaurants sustain their businesses.

Yu, through inline, has helped advance the digitalisation of Taiwan’s food and beverage industry. With 15 years of experience in global software, Yu, a former engineer at Yahoo Taiwan, created a user-friendly software interface based on thousands of hours spent working alongside restaurant staff and observing their pain points. That software interface now makes day-to-day operations easier for tens of thousands of people working in restaurants across APAC, shortens team member training time, and effectively increases restaurant profits.

Today, inline systems are used widely in independent businesses, restaurant groups and department stores. By 2022 more than 85 per cent of the Michelin-starred restaurants in Taiwan use inline. The company has since expanded to Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia, and with remote teams in the US; through a partnership with global restaurant reservation service provider OpenTable, it also has operations in Japan.