App8 Helps Restaurants Predict Demand Using AWS Solutions

Tech company App8 empowers restaurateurs to create the ideal contactless dining experience for their guests. Whether dining in or taking out, guests can use App8’s service to browse a digital menu, order food, and pay—all from their mobile devices and without the need to create an account or install an app. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, App8’s innovations had gone a long way toward improving the customer experience and optimizing restaurant staff time. Once the COVID-19 pandemic hit and no-contact dining became a priority for restaurants, App8 fulfilled a critical customer need.

Looking to further improve the dining experience for guests and streamline operations for restaurateurs, App8 set out to develop a tool that could predict customer volume and demand for particular menu items. “Imagine you’re a restaurant,” says Hani Jabbour, chief technology officer at App8. “With this tool, you can actually predict how many people are going to come to your restaurant at a specific time and how many menu items are going to be in demand. This will enable you to better manage your inventory—you won’t waste food, and you’ll get a better return on your investment.” In addition to reducing food waste and keeping popular menu items available, the solution would help restaurants optimize staff scheduling. 

App8’s solution outputs probabilistic predictions at three default quantiles to address each restaurant’s sensitivity to over- and understocking. Restaurants sensitive to overstocking can use the P10 forecast; restaurants more sensitive to missing customer demand can use the P90 forecast; and restaurants with equal sensitivity to over- and understocking can use the P50 forecast.

Perhaps most importantly, the tool can help restaurants run “what-if” scenarios to prepare in times of uncertainty. “Improving Forecast Accuracy with Machine Learning helped us deliver quick, reliable, and cost-effective forecasts to our customers,” says Jabbour. “We’ve been able to deepen our relationships with restaurateurs and further help them streamline their businesses and survive the pandemic.” Using an AWS Solution in conjunction with its own innovative service, App8 offers restaurants one more tool to help them not only survive—but thrive.