After several years of working side by side with our clients, we can say that we are one of the most complete HORECA business optimization platforms both nationally and internationally. Our tools evolve and improve every day to adapt to the changing environment and always stay at the forefront.
Any news?
Of course! A truly important one. Long before the pandemic, we realized that in the HORECA sector there was an unsolved problem, and until that moment impossible to control, that was causing enormous financial losses for businesses and generating the largest food waste on the entire planet related to a single sector.
What are we talking about?
The difficulty of predicting what will be sold in HORECA businesses and the number of decisions that are related in one way or another to that forecast. Currently, hospitality operators, in the best case, rely on experience to know how many diners they will feed or what products will be consumed. However, that experience cannot cover situations like weather impacts or holidays, or even business trends, which results in costly errors in multiple areas such as purchasing and staffing.
Our Story: from losing a bet to revolutionizing the HORECA sector
Controliza was born from a bet by its founders who, tired of seeing the amount of food wasted by a restaurant they frequented and the cost it represented, decided to bet the owner they could calculate how many people would come to the restaurant in a given period and thus help them buy better. The bet seemed simple -- if we have historical sales data and use predictive tools already on the market, we will win. However, they lost the bet. Why? Neither the historical data was reliable, complete or usable, nor did standard predictive tools fit the problem. Nonetheless, the problem was there and worth solving, so they formed a team of enthusiasts and experts, fully motivated to help hospitality businesses become more sustainable and profitable. That is how Controliza was born.
The first thing we did was ensure that the data used for decision-making was correct, reliable and in real time, and thus the Business Intelligence tool was born, offering that data in a graphic and understandable way, ready for decision-making.
However, that was not enough. If we truly wanted to help reduce waste and make businesses more sustainable and profitable, we had to enter the area responsible for most of both waste and a significant portion of profitability: purchasing. Therefore, the next step was to create a complete purchasing tool, capable of controlling everything from the order to the warehouse, and from a single location to an entire franchise: Controliza's purchasing tool.
It is now, years after that bet, and after extraordinarily difficult work, that we are in a position to win it. The reason? The new predictive tool developed for the first time specifically for the HORECA sector, capable of predicting sales for the coming days or weeks with great accuracy thanks to its Machine Learning algorithms, able to learn and adjust to the reality of each location's sales, almost like magic.
With it, we can adjust expected sales for a location if bad weather is expected or if there is a big football match. How much beer can I expect to sell if next week is Easter? How many steaks should I buy if it is the second week of August and normal weather is expected? These are the types of questions the system answers, and not only that -- it anticipates them by suggesting what a location should buy based on what it will sell and what it has left in the warehouse, something for which controlling warehouses in real time is essential.
In summary, we have created a tool that by itself, or in combination with the rest of Controliza's tools, is capable of optimizing hospitality businesses and, now yes, capable of winning the bet that started it all.
If you want to learn more about our sales forecasting tool for restaurants, visit our website.
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