What technologies are used to open a restaurant, cafe or convenience store? The answer to this question is looking for Nikolai Dubinin, host of the YouTube channel Industry 4.0
To understand where it is better to open a restaurant and how much you can earn on it, you need to analyze a lot of data: transit traffic, road congestion, average income of residents of the area, their age and gender. All this can be done by artificial intelligence. Neural networks process a huge amount of data and give recommendations to those who are thinking about opening a cafe.
Many projects are trying to implement the idea of big data. For example, Placer.ai was launched in the US in 2016. It analyzes pedestrian traffic and other non-personal data to recommend to the retailer where, what and how to place.
The most popular example is the American project Zume Pizza. The company did not rent premises for pizzerias – chefs cooked right in the trucks. Zume Pizza tried to create an intelligent platform that would determine in which area and when there will be the highest demand for pizza. Artificial intelligence predicted where the car would go and when to turn on the ovens so that people would get their pizza hot. However, not many people used the company’s services, so today they sell packaging and protective masks.
There is a Foodcast.ai company in our country. Using neural networks, she analyzes hundreds of factors that affect the demand in a restaurant: holidays, weather, precipitation, weekends. For example, the most unexpected factor that affects demand is a sharp temperature drop. If the temperature drop occurs from 18 degrees to 15 degrees, then the demand from the restaurant does not change much. But if the difference goes from 18 to 9 degrees, then this affects the work of the institution: delivery grows, sales of hot drinks increase.
The AI-based system also helps the restaurant properly allocate resources. Which of the chefs prepares orders for customers in the hall, and which – for couriers, how many waiters to call to work during peak hours, how many products to buy – these questions can be answered by the neural network.
Three years ago, McDonalds bought the Israeli startup Dynamic Yield, which was engaged in technologies for analyzing personal data. Immediately, in pilot mode, a smart system was introduced in one of the restaurants in Miami. The algorithm analyzed the weather, traffic congestion in the vicinity, studied what events were taking place nearby, and also collected historical data on sales in a particular institution and throughout the network as a whole.
What other technologies help restaurants be more interesting for visitors? For example, a QR code that you need to point your phone’s camera at to read the menu. The technology is especially relevant for establishments that frequently update the list of dishes – you do not often have to give a new menu to the printer. It also saves trees. If a visitor opens a QR code via the restaurant’s Wi-Fi, then the data about his order is uploaded to the restaurant’s database and stored there.
What else to read on the topic:
- Does the robot cook cook deliciously and where can I try a “technological” salad?
- Restaurants of the future: when we will be served by robot waiters
- On the Checkout: How Technology is Changing Retail
- How artificial intelligence is changing restaurants
- Is AI Really Profitable for the Restaurant Industry (ENG)
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