AI and Technology for Catering Businesses
Most of what gets sold as AI in this industry is a dashboard with a new name on it. Some of it is genuinely useful. The difference matters, because at your size a wrong subscription is money you do not get back.
I advise on and implement the tools that do real work in a catering business: stock management, ordering, and staff scheduling. Those three, done properly, are where the money is.
Stock management
Most kitchens do not really know what they are holding. The count happens on a Sunday night, it takes two hours, it is half guessed by the time it reaches the last shelf, and by Wednesday it is fiction.
A stock system set up properly tells you what you hold, what it cost, and what it is costing you to hold it. It also shows you the lines you buy every week and never use. Every kitchen has some. Most owners are surprised by which.
Ordering
Ordering off a hunch is expensive twice. Either you over-order and it goes in the bin, or you under-order and pay a premium for an emergency delivery on a Friday.
Ordering against a forecast built from your own sales history, rather than from a supplier's suggestion, takes the guesswork out and front-loads the week. This is the change most kitchens feel fastest, usually inside a month.
Staff scheduling
Most rotas are built from habit. The same people on the same shifts because that is how it has always been, rather than because that is what the covers need.
A rota built against forecast covers puts your strongest people on the sessions that earn, and stops you paying four of them to stand about on a wet Tuesday. Labour is usually your largest controllable cost after food, and it is the one most often left alone.
What it will not do
It will not cook. It will not replace a chef, and anything sold to you on that basis is being sold by somebody who has never run a section.
What it does is take administration off people who should be on the floor or on the pass. That is the whole of it, and it is worth having.
How I work
I start with the problem, not the product. I look at how you order, how you count and how you build the rota now, and find where the money is actually leaking. Often the answer is not software at all, it is a process nobody has looked at in years.
Where a system is the right answer, I will show you the arithmetic on what it costs against what it saves at your size. If it does not pay for itself I will say so, and you can put the money where it works harder.
I judge a tool by what it does on a Tuesday lunchtime, not by what it does in a demo.
Get in touch
If you are being pitched a system and want a straight answer on whether it is worth it, get in touch for a free initial consultation.
Serving Cardiff, Newport, Swansea, Bristol, Gloucester and the surrounding areas.