Artificial Intelligence just arrived: ordering is now a no-brainer in Scottsdale Arizona

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is not the opposite of Natural Stupidity: AI is based on computer algorithms, that supplement the intelligence of human experts in many fields: now in a restaurant near you! While ordering can be done by many solutions: this does it with next to no work. AI and its "deep learning" abilities do the trick. No data entry and data maintenance. Its all automatic.

This week the first US customer of ANDADO has gone live with their new ordering solution. Modestly we call it - ORDER. No fancy name, but a tremendous service: in our back office app we have all the information needed to order. Vendors, pricing, items, sizes and how much and when the restaurant or hotel has ordered historically etc. This solution has successfully been beta-tested in a European hotel group with over 150 properties, ordering both, F &B and FF & E equally efficiently.

ORDER is a comprehensive procurement, inventory, and cost control system designed to meet the requirements of the hospitality industry. The solution manages all property inventory, providing essential real-time information on cost of sales, effective revenue, stock on hand, order proposals, and stocking requirements, and bringing efficiencies to daily workflow and food cost management.

Who has not seen the over-ordered supply of coca cola, enough for a year? Or the tens of thousands of $$ in meat and seafood, in excess of whats really needed? The effects of running out of stock and having to 86 items, thus reducing revenue is a driver of over-ordering. ORDER does not work off of that fear. It just uses numbers...

The "Analytical Data" part in our company name stands for the ability to use AI (Artificial Intelligence) and make use of the analyzed spending/ordering patterns. Now no longer a sophisticated, highly trained chef or bar manager needs to make personal judgement calls. Or, a call based on clever forecasting revenues. Now ORDER does it for you. It uses data in ANDADO to make smart order proposals, neatly organized per each vendor in cute shopping carts. If approved or amended they go right to the vendor.

The best way to explain how this miracle works, is to discuss the background: creator of this ground-breaking business helper is Johann Maierhofer, the inventory guru, who is the original data scientist who architected Micros' Materials Control*. This is the by far bestselling inventory application ever. I am not saying "the best" but Materials Control (MC) still to this day lives in large F & B environ-ments, like corporate cafeterias for thousands of employees: or hotels and convention centers that provide amounts of food and beverages that simply can't be managed without computer tools. (*MC is now part of Oracle Hospitality)

But Johann also observed the downside of his powerful MC solution: complexity makes it hard to manage. You don't need rocket-scientists for it, but almost. The downside: complexity eats into benefits. For most 'regular' restaurants under $4,000,000 in sales this approach is not practical.

He knew that there ought to be a simpler way that works also for smaller restaurants. Ideally the entire process of inventory management could be simplified. All of it. From receiving to storing, using and then replenishing it, i.e. ordering it: all should be so easy, that it could be done by ordinary restaurant employees without any training. Yes, "without any training" seriously - was a design objective.

Johann's company is a joint venture between Cisbox and Ciscube, both sister companies and manufacturer's of ANDADO's software tools and business processes.

In my 25 years in the US Point of Sale Systems world, I had ample opportunity to meet F & B workers. Some look at the back office like it's the "minutiae" - stuff that someone just had to do. In my native Germany the mantra was and still is "procurement is profit." A dollar saved is a dollar made. Yes, any savings go straight to the bottom-line. Of course over- or under ordering costs lots of money. So the result of our ORDER service is savings, less capital in inventory, and will soon enable ordering identical items from the best priced vendor. But best of all: it allows ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results in procurement. Welcome artificial intelligence! Call Bernie Schwentick 480 222 0050 for more information.