UEAT and CRIM: A winning partnership

Success story

November 24, 2020

Experts agree that the restaurant industry is in danger. With razor-thin profit margins ranging from 2% to 4%, and a pandemic weakening the industry, the time has come for companies to think of creative solutions.

In the restaurant business, demand depends on consumer preferences, income and socio-demographic criteria. Restaurant profitability depends on location, food quality and marketing.

The restaurants that do best are those that focus on delivery or takeaway. In 2019¹, there were over 95,000 establishments in Canada whose core business was preparing meals, light meals and beverages ordered by customers for immediate consumption on or off the premises, with revenues of C$674 million. In the United States, there were over 660,000 of them, with sales of $300 billion USD.

The challenge of online ordering: static menus

In times of pandemic, some restaurants are just starting out with their takeaway menus, while others are stepping up their efforts, which have already been underway for several years. Yet despite all this, the takeaway menus presented online or on social networks are static: they follow a linear human logic (starter, meal, dessert) as if they were presented to you in the dining room. In marketing jargon, this menu would be described as non-optimized and devoid of context.

The absence of a menu adapted to consumer preferences or the surrounding environment means missed opportunities to generate additional revenue and stay afloat.

The solution: the right dishes at the right time for the right customer

To recoup this lost revenue, Quebec-based technology company UEAT came up with the idea of developing a suggestion engine based on consumer preferences. Its technology would enable the online menu to adapt to the profile and context of the person in front of the screen.

To illustrate :

The menu adapts to the individual’s profile (food preferences and tastes) : if a customer is used to ordering a meal for his family, the system learns and will propose “family” menus; or for a customer who never orders meat, the next time, the system will propose a vegan menu.

The menu adapts to the context (seasons, climate, life events): the system learns and will suggest menus adapted to certain external factors; soup if it’s cold, desserts if it’s Mother’s Day, etc…

Platform development

This solution had to be deployed quickly, as the big players – multinational fast-food chains – were already starting to acquire similar solutions at a cost of millions. Enter CRIM: with its mastery of applied research, its cutting-edge artificial intelligence methodology and its well-honed processes, CRIM facilitated the pre-processing of the data and made it ready for testing the recommendation engine.

As a result, the platform and algorithm could be developed much more quickly. In addition, UEAT’s preparatory work enabled CRIM to use no less than 800,000 anonymized orders from Quebec and Ontario.

To validate its recommendation model, UEAT carried out online (A/B) tests for a dozen restaurants in Quebec: one group of consumers consulted a menu with intelligent recommendations developed by CRIM, while another group had access to the static menu without recommendations.

At Benny&Co. the contextual recommendation engine is located in the Featured section of the site. Customers are offered a menu based on weather, geographic location, time of day, daily events, day of the week, etc.

Positive spin-offs

Since deployment at Benny&Co. in September 2020, orders from the AI recommendation system have generated $115,000 in revenue compared with just $22,000 when AI was not used, a gain of 500%!

In terms of technology, ” we have acquired 3 years’ experience in the 6 months we have been partnering with CRIM “, confides Bernard Imbert, Research and Development Director at UEAT. It’s this competitive edge that sets UEAT apart in this hyper-competitive sector.

“Our ultimate goal is to make the contextual recommendation engine accessible to all types of restaurants. The collaboration with CRIM brings us closer to this goal,” says René-Pier Plourde, Director of Communications at UEAT.

Clearly, this innovative technology, created through fruitful collaboration, will propel UEAT onto the world stage.

Image credit: UEAT