COVID-19 and the metamorphosis of the F&B industry in Malaysia

In 2020, the prolonged lockdownimposed due to theCOVID-19 pandemic caused considerable disruption to the F&B industry, forcing food operators to move their business operations to digital platforms.Dominated by small and medium enterprises (SMEs), F&B industry players have found it challenging to embrace digital technologies with the limited resources they possess. Underpinned by the business model articulated by (Teece, Long Range Planning 51:40–49, 2018a), this chapter illustrates how F&B businesses have used their dynamic capabilities to sense and seize new opportunities and subsequently transform the way they operate. This study adopts a constructivist grounded theory approach as its methodology, based on media and online reports on the F&B industry published between January 2020 and June 2021. The findings reveal that some food operators have revised their value propositions by altering their product portfolio, some have formed synergies with external partners (e.g., GrabFood and FoodPanda) to create a seamless customer journey experience, while others have embraced transformative change through the emergence of cloud kitchens. The findings also showthat the extent of change is strongly influenced by a firm’s entrepreneurial and organizational competencies, which it uses to orchestrate resources and execute operational strategies to embed digital technologies in its business operations. Indeed, the pandemic has become a force for change that has revolutionized F&B business operations by encouraging the industry to embrace digitalization.