Challenge
A restaurant group with extensive food waste and inconsistent profitability was struggling to optimize their menu offerings. They lacked data-driven insights on item performance, ingredient utilization, and pricing strategy, leading to approximately 18% food waste and unpredictable profit margins across locations.
Solution
An AI menu analytics and pricing optimization system using Claude API and Make.com that:
- Analyzed sales data to identify high-margin and high-velocity menu items
- Tracked ingredient usage patterns and waste across all menu items
- Recommended menu composition changes based on profitability and popularity
- Suggested optimal pricing adjustments based on elasticity testing
- Identified ingredient cross-utilization opportunities to reduce waste
- Generated forecasts for ingredient purchasing to optimize inventory
Implementation
The implementation was completed in 4 weeks:
- Integration with POS and inventory management systems
- Historical data analysis to establish performance baselines
- Development of menu engineering algorithms and pricing models
- Creation of management dashboards for decision support
- Staff training on using insights for menu planning
Results
- Food costs reduced by 17% through better menu engineering and ingredient utilization
- Profit per guest increased by 22% due to optimized pricing and menu composition
- 0.8 FTE saved in menu planning and analysis work
- Food waste reduced from 18% to 6% through better forecasting and cross-utilization
Sustainability Impact
The significant reduction in food waste also aligned with the company's sustainability goals, becoming part of their corporate social responsibility messaging.
