EatClub has released the world's first machine learning algorithm for restaurant deals, helping drive recovery in the hospitality sector.

EatClub is helping restaurants use AI and big data/machine learning to attract the right amount of customers when they need them - vital information for managing demand in a post-Covid world.

• EatClub Artificial Intelligence predicts with 93% accuracy, the deal required to fill a restaurant’s empty tables at any time of the day, providing predictability in an unpredictable post-Covid world.
• Twelve months in the making, EatClub’s AI software uses millions of data points to predict customer behaviour. Its aim is to allow restaurants to use the power of big data, so they can maximise the number of customers and their profits.
• Not only can EatClub quickly fill empty tables for venues on-demand when they need it, but now we can also predict the minimum deal required to achieve their objective through our “Predictive Deal Performance Algorithm” (PDPA).
• The Algorithm also generates “Daily Opportunities” taking into account a venue’s average order value and variable costs to suggest deals with the highest contribution (takings after variable costs) for the day.

THE BACKSTORY

All restaurants are faced with empty tables throughout the day. This can be due to off-peak times, cancelled bookings or simply because of poor weather… and restaurants have traditionally been limited in their ability to fill those tables last minute.

Venues could try blanket discounting, like happy hours or drink specials, but this risks giving away margin to customers who were going to visit the venue anyway.

EatClub revolutionised deal-making technology in hospitality in late 2017 where, for the first time, restaurants could instantly post last-minute deals in real-time when they needed a table filled.

Since 2017, EatClub has filled millions of tables in Australia for its 2,000+ restaurant partners.

EatClub has now taken its technology a step further, building an artificial intelligence algorithm that provides highly accurate predictions to help restaurants fill tables using the lowest possible deal.

For example, a restaurant owner might have three spare tables at 6pm. They could use the EatClub app to post a deal and fill those tables but now, the EatClub AI model will tell them exactly what deal needs to be posted to have the tables filled. This is based on factors such as past customer behaviour, the weather & even how many people are currently walking the streets.

The algorithm has also made it possible to suggest deals with the highest contribution margins, taking into account the individual venues average order value, food cost, cost of the deal and the impact the deal percentage has on the number of customers attracted. 

TECHNICALITIES

EatClub is uniquely positioned to develop this technology which utilises the tens of millions of data points gathered through millions of bookings & transactions on the EatClub marketplace since 2017.

This vast array of data points includes historical trends, current traffic levels and even the weather and time of year.

The Predictive Deal Performance Algorithm is designed to predict in real-time the number of redemptions (and party sizes) a deal is expected to receive. 

The model is trained from millions of historical deals over the last three years and uses advanced data manipulation techniques to convert the back-end data into a format for Artificial Intelligence to leverage. 

The model is deployed to a RESTful API ready to predict on data packets sent via http requests and is able to return results.

We have been working with data scientists for over 12 months to build, test and integrate the AI into the platform.

QUOTES FROM PAN KOUTLAKIS - CO-FOUNDER AND CEO

1. “2020 was an incredibly tough time for our industry but we are feeling optimistic about 2021. With powerful tools like this one, I believe restaurants are going to be in a stronger position in a post-pandemic world, than they were before it.”
2. “Our ultimate goal is to maximise restaurant profitability and we believe technology & AI will play an important role in the future of hospitality. If a restaurant is offering 50% off to attract customers, but could have filled the same amount of tables offering 25% off, then we want to provide them with that information. That knowledge is impossible to achieve manually but through our new AI software it’s generated automatically… and the more data we input, the smarter it gets.” 
3. “It's gotten to a point where a venue can jump onto the EatClub app and attract the exact number of customers they want at different times of the day, while still maximising profit margins."