In Asia, many people believe that your blood type should determine your diet and exercise regime. Now, a restaurant in Thailand is promoting that idea by organising their menu according to blood type. Each dish on the menu at The Third Floor in Bangkok is accompanied by the letters O, A, B or AB, to encourage diners to choose a meal that will complement their dietary needs.

According to the blood type diet, type O’s need a high-protein diet, stemming from their roots in carnivorous tribes, while type A’s should go meat-free, as their roots in agriculture mean they have a sensitive immune system, and so on.

I’ve no idea whether there’s anything in this, but as a means of differentiating your restaurant from the others in a crowded market, it certainly has merit. If you’re in a heavily populated market, it’s always worth looking for a way to separate your offering from that of the crowd.

One of my pet hates, having endured a tiring flight, is to then go through the annoying rigmarole that characterises renting a car at an airport. I was therefore interested to read about Skurt which aims to remove the hassle.

Skurt is a new Los Angeles-based service that enables visitors to order a rental car via an app and have it delivered to them by an agent at the arrivals terminal. Users can confirm and pay for the hire through the app. Upon landing, they are be met by a representative and then  escorted to their rental car directly outside. No shuttle bus, no queues, no paperwork to complete.

It sounds like a great service which any weary traveller would appreciate – wherever they’re landing. Who will be first to bring something similar to the UK?

www.skurtapp.com

Bartering is an age old trading system, but new technology is being used to bring it bang up to date. Italy-based TimeRepublik  allows users to learn new skills without money changing hands.

The website links users with those who can help them develop new skills. Users don’t pay for the service, but rather they build up ‘hours’ by helping others. If a member tutors somebody for an hour, they receive an hour to spend learning something else from other members.

By removing money from the exchange process, the company open up new skills to a wider audience than would otherwise be able to afford to attain them. It also allows other members to gain from dormant skills they’re not currently profiting from.

Are there other services that could benefit from a bartering approach like this? I’m sure there must be.

www.timerepublik.com

Packing for a holiday or business trip involves multiple hassles. There’s the packing and unpacking process itself,  the tedium of carrying a large suitcase around, and the time and financial cost associated with checking bags in for a flight. A new US based service called unPack attempts to address these issues by  delivering a set of essentials to their customers destination.

unPack have identified three areas of travel difficulty — taking toiletries through security, remembering the right appliance chargers and buying specific clothing appropriate for the destination and its season. With the service, users are given a set of toiletries, and can choose to rent a clothing bundle of designer brands to suit the local weather conditions for the duration of their trip.  When it’s time to check out, users leave the clothes and accessories with the hotel for pickup, and travel back to the airport as lightly as they arrived.

The unPack service is currently  limited to New York and Boston, with hopes of adding further destinations in the near future.

Something to copy in Europe perhaps?

www.theunpack.com