AI

Crunchtime unveils AI forecasting

October 22, 2024

Crunchtime, a provider of operations management solutions for the restaurant industry, has incorporated a custom-built machine learning algorithm into its forecasting engine to help restaurants forecast sale, said John Raguin, CEO of Crunchtime.

"The restaurant landscape has become too competitive for managers to spend all their time in the back office using guesswork to forecast sales, order food and schedule staff," he said in a company press release. "By automating this time-consuming process with AI we're delivering even better results. At one store location, the AI forecast was within 13 cents of actual sales, and the algorithm is only going to improve over time as more data is processed."

Over the past 12 months, Crunchtime has worked closely with customers to test, refine and improve its forecast engine with the addition of AI forecasting capabilities. Early results have been promising with restaurants seeing an increase in forecast accuracy by up to 27% at different store locations during testing, Raguin said.

Forecast data is integrated throughout the Crunchtime platform, as it drives critical recommendations for managers on the ideal number of hours to schedule labor, how much food to prep throughout the day, and how much food to order from vendors.

"As an industry leader in forecasting, our focus is ensuring that restaurants have high-quality data, at the right time, for the right people, so restaurant teams can always make the best possible decisions about their food and labor operations," Erik Cox, VP of product development, Crunchtime, said in the release. "AI forecasting is the first of many exciting applications of AI that our team will deliver to help restaurants and their teams thrive."

Crunchtime's AI forecasting is included in both the Inventory Management and Labor & Scheduling solutions.