Public Funding for Tenzo Limited

Hospitality is the heart of every community. Never more so, than since the pandemic. However the industry, a key pillar of the UK's economic and social success, employing c.3m people, is in crisis as it faces a perfect storm of challenges: Staff shortages, rising costs, disproportionally high business rates and VAT rate increase threaten insolvency to a quarter (22,000) of UK pubs and restaurants \[APPBG\]. 25% of pubs, restaurants and hotels currently close for part of the week because of the UK's staff shortage of 200,000 vacancies across the sector\[Guardian2021\]\[Independent\]. Energy price rises of 54%\[MSE\] and food price hikes of avg.5% \[ONS\] due to inflation, Brexit and the conflict in Ukraine (major exporter of crops) highlight the need to reduce costs and minimise food waste (industry-wide c.£3bn annually). Business rates of avg.3-10% of turnover (Amazon pays 2%)\[APPBG\] and the VAT rate return to 20% (from 12.5%) are the last straw for a sector so critical to economic and social recovery but operating on minimal profit margins of avg.4%\[OTL\]. The sector needs extreme resilience to survive. The key to resiliency lies in accurate demand forecasting. Tenzo delivers predictive analytics and actionable business insights for restaurants and retail, delivered in-store, in real-time and on your phone. Tenzo is now working with hundreds of locations such as Iberica, The Breakfast Club and Chilango and helps their clients: * Improve gross margins up to 18% * Reduce labour costs up to 10% * Improved social review ratings by up to 0.5 stars * Increase staff performance * Reduce overhead and errors by automatically combining all business data sources - POS, Staff Scheduler, Social Media, Inventory Management, and more * See all their data in one place on Web and Mobile * Optimise purchasing and scheduling, in turn reducing wastage and labour cost by 10-20%. * Increase their forecast accuracy by 25-50%.

The UK hospitality industry generates over 1 million tonnes of food waste each year, equivalent to approximately £3 billion in cost and over 4.5 million tonnes of CO2\. At the same time, UK restaurants yield a meager 3-5% average profit margin, making it one of the least profitable industries in the country. This economic struggle has been dramatically exacerbated by the COVID crisis. Through effective food waste reduction, restaurants can boost profitability by up to 2pp, while drastically reducing the environmental impact of their operations. The key to reducing food waste lies in accurate demand forecasting. Restaurants order their perishable inventory days and weeks before selling dishes to their customers. Given that most restaurants rely on rigid 4-week demand averages and gut instinct to make their procurement decisions, food orders are routinely in excess of real demand - creating food waste. Tenzo will research & develop a cutting-edge forecasting tool, which will allow restaurant businesses to accurately forecast customer demand. Utilising powerful artificial intelligence algorithms, the tool will achieve the following objectives: * Generate accurate restaurant sales forecasts based on historical sales, weather, public events and other features * Split daily forecasts into item-level and hourly projections * Provide those forecasts to frontline workers (chefs, section managers, etc.) within a user-friendly mobile app - enabling them to know easily how much food to: * prepare and when (e.g. how much chicken to grill every hour); and * order and when (e.g. how much fish to order for next week). Tenzo's project will focus on finding the most accurate forecasting algorithms and combining them with a user-friendly software interface to ensure frontline workers are empowered to reduce food waste in their day-to-day operations. By 2024, our tool could reduce annual UK hospitality food waste by over 38,000 tonnes, CO2 by over 175,000 tonnes and restaurant costs by over £20 million.

The UK hospitality industry generates over 1 million tonnes of food waste each year, equivalent to approximately £3 billion in cost and over 4.5 million tonnes of CO2\. At the same time, UK restaurants yield a meager 3-5% average profit margin, making it one of the least profitable industries in the country. This economic struggle has been dramatically exacerbated by the COVID crisis. Through effective food waste reduction, restaurants can boost profitability by up to 2pp, while drastically reducing the environmental impact of their operations. The key to reducing food waste lies in accurate demand forecasting. Restaurants order their perishable inventory days and weeks before selling dishes to their customers. Given that most restaurants rely on rigid 4-week demand averages and gut instinct to make their procurement decisions, food orders are routinely in excess of real demand - creating food waste. Tenzo will research & develop a cutting-edge forecasting tool, which will allow restaurant businesses to accurately forecast customer demand. Utilising powerful artificial intelligence algorithms, the tool will achieve the following objectives: * Generate accurate restaurant sales forecasts based on historical sales, weather, public events and other features * Split daily forecasts into item-level and hourly projections * Provide those forecasts to frontline workers (chefs, section managers, etc.) within a user-friendly mobile app - enabling them to know easily how much food to: * prepare and when (e.g. how much chicken to grill every hour); and * order and when (e.g. how much fish to order for next week). Tenzo's project will focus on finding the most accurate forecasting algorithms and combining them with a user-friendly software interface to ensure frontline workers are empowered to reduce food waste in their day-to-day operations. By 2024, our tool could reduce annual UK hospitality food waste by over 38,000 tonnes, CO2 by over 175,000 tonnes and restaurant costs by over £20 million.