Food Profit Group is helping restaurants in Canada optimize their food costs by finding the true cost of manufacturing for every single dish on the menu.
The Moncton, New Brunswick-based organization is focused on improving menu pricing and food costs across an entire industry that believes that the failure to calculate food costs is one of the restaurant industry’s biggest failure causes and problems. To do so, the company has developed a invoice processing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms.
Food Profit Group is nominated for ITWC’s Digital Transformation Awards, being held June 14 in Toronto. We’re covering all the nominations we’ve received ahead of the big event. Nominations for this year are now closed.
The company was founded by food industry executives, a former chef and distribution industry sales executive, in 2012 under the name Food Tender and first created an app that would help restaurants with their invoices and with ordering supplies. Through this first experience, the organization discovered the true pain point that needed to be covered in the industry: menu and food costs. Thus, under parent company Food Tender Solutions Inc., Food Profit Group was born.
The first challenge Food Profit Group had to jump over was the complexity of managing one’s costs, and the often anti-tech mentality presiding over the industry.
“All existing food costing software required owners or staff to become manual keyboarders. Restaurant people are artistic creators of plate presentations and dislike technology use, so the decision was to remove all technology engagement as a sales obstacle,” said David Jonah, CEO and CTO of Food Profit Group in the company’s nomination.
By turning to a SaaS offering that uses AI and machine learning, the company was able to cut down a five hour process to just one hour through automation.
This service still helps with invoice managing, but it takes that a step further by analyzing the data provided by the restaurant to give the restaurant a break down of how much it is spending per dish. This is an act that restaurant owners are already doing, but Food Profit Group gives those owners an opportunity to save on the time required for those processes.
The SaaS solution includes the ability to track when certain food prices are increasing and then suggest a plan to readjust to the new price, and a “food waste measuring stick” to optimize menus and prevent loss over food that has gone bad.