A.I. forecasting to reduce food waste - COVID-19 impact

英国酒店业每年产生超过100万吨的食物垃圾，相当于大约30亿英镑的成本和超过450万吨的二氧化碳。与此同时，英国餐饮业的平均利润率只有可怜的3-5%，是英国利润最低的行业之一。COVID危机大大加剧了这种经济斗争。通过有效减少食物浪费，餐馆可以将盈利能力提高至多2%，同时大大减少其运营对环境的影响。减少食物浪费的关键在于准确的需求预测。餐馆在向顾客出售菜肴前几天甚至几周订购易腐库存。考虑到大多数餐馆依靠严格的4周平均需求和直觉来做出采购决定，食物订单通常超过实际需求，造成食物浪费。Tenzo将研发一种尖端的预测工具，使餐饮企业能够准确预测客户需求。利用强大的人工智能算法，该工具将实现以下目标：*根据历史销售，天气，公共活动和其他特征生成准确的餐厅销售预测*将每日预测分为项目级别和小时预测*将这些预测提供给一线工作人员（厨师，部门经理等）在一个用户友好的移动应用程序中-使他们能够轻松了解多少食物：*准备和何时（例如每小时烤多少只鸡）；还有* order和什么时候（例如下周要订多少鱼）。Tenzo的项目将专注于寻找最准确的预测算法，并将其与用户友好的软件界面相结合，以确保一线工作人员能够在日常工作中减少食物浪费。到2024年，我们的工具可以减少英国每年超过38,000吨的餐饮浪费，超过175,000吨的二氧化碳和超过2000万英镑的餐厅成本。

The UK hospitality industry generates over 1 million tonnes of food waste each year, equivalent to approximately £3 billion in cost and over 4.5 million tonnes of CO2\. At the same time, UK restaurants yield a meager 3-5% average profit margin, making it one of the least profitable industries in the country. This economic struggle has been dramatically exacerbated by the COVID crisis. Through effective food waste reduction, restaurants can boost profitability by up to 2pp, while drastically reducing the environmental impact of their operations.The key to reducing food waste lies in accurate demand forecasting. Restaurants order their perishable inventory days and weeks before selling dishes to their customers. Given that most restaurants rely on rigid 4-week demand averages and gut instinct to make their procurement decisions, food orders are routinely in excess of real demand - creating food waste.Tenzo will research & develop a cutting-edge forecasting tool, which will allow restaurant businesses to accurately forecast customer demand. Utilising powerful artificial intelligence algorithms, the tool will achieve the following objectives:* Generate accurate restaurant sales forecasts based on historical sales, weather, public events and other features* Split daily forecasts into item-level and hourly projections* Provide those forecasts to frontline workers (chefs, section managers, etc.) within a user-friendly mobile app - enabling them to know easily how much food to: * prepare and when (e.g. how much chicken to grill every hour); and * order and when (e.g. how much fish to order for next week).Tenzo's project will focus on finding the most accurate forecasting algorithms and combining them with a user-friendly software interface to ensure frontline workers are empowered to reduce food waste in their day-to-day operations. By 2024, our tool could reduce annual UK hospitality food waste by over 38,000 tonnes, CO2 by over 175,000 tonnes and restaurant costs by over £20 million.