There’s no doubt that voice is a coming commerce interface, if for nothing else than the simplicity in engenders. In the restaurant vertical we’ve seen the first stages of voice ordering for kiosk and drive thrus. Now we’re seeing an application for voice that makes a ton of sense: inventory.
Inventory is a massive headache for food operators who effectively function as mini manufacturing facilities. Not only does on-site manufacturing bring a host of challenges, but it’s even more critical to get right when your goods are perishable, as is very clearly the case in the hospitality industry.
“Restaurateurs have always been challenged with inventory management, with many small operators lacking the middle management necessary to effectively execute food costing,” shared Michael L. Atkinson, founder and CEO of VoiceStar.ai, a voice AI inventory management company he started in 2019. We can confirm Michael’s comments with our own experiences and data from US Foods and Sysco, major US food distributors: 85% of independent restaurants have no idea what their food costs are.
Michael believes the biggest barrier to those 85% of operators grasping the true cost of goods is not a lack of willingness, but a lack of time. “When you’re small you just run out of hours in the day. I was in those shoes so I empathize with the plight first hand.” With VoiceStar’s voice AI, the time it takes to complete inventory drops by over 90%. “Our partners are able to record an average inventory and generate costing metrics using VoiceINV™ in under 30 minutes, and anyone who has even recorded a shelf-to-sheet inventory the conventional, manual way knows that a proper inventory count takes more than one person and hours,” explains Michael.
Here’s a demo of how VoiceINV™ works:
There’s ample opportunity to improve inventory management upmarket too, with many of today’s existing inventory solutions providers – Crunchtime, Fourth, et al – running legacy businesses built on old technology. From our view it makes perfect sense to license VoiceStar’s voice technology as an intelligence layer on top of a legacy food costing platform, where distribution costs are already amortized. In fact, we think without this technology many of the incumbents will end up looking more like Aloha POS in a few years, grasping at anything to stay relevant in a market that’s passed them by.
“We believe that voice-assisted anything is the future of everything. Our mission is to be the voice-layer to a global foodservice and hospitality industry.” To execute on this vision VoiceStar has attracted machine learning and voice technology experts with deep restaurant technology expertise brought in by its founders and strategic advisors.
Pricing ranges from $50 to $90 per month. You can reach Michael at info@starbar.ai.
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