Visitor forecasting with Machine Learning
Running an efficient chain of in company restaurants requires more than just delicious hospitality, food and a welcoming ambiance. One of the most significant challenges faced by restaurant owners is predicting daily customer footfall accurately. This is essential for efficient ingredient procurement, staff scheduling, and overall operational planning. However, forecasting customer numbers is an intricate task, especially considering the multitude of unpredictable factors affecting restaurant attendance, such as weather fluctuations, what's on the menu and local competition.
Learn from the past, predict the future
Beyond the Cloud, in collaboration with our customers' in company catering unit, embarked on a journey to address this problem using data-driven methods. By leveraging the power of machine learning, we aimed to provide a reliable model capable of forecasting the number of visitors for any given day in the future. Our goal was to equip the restaurants with a strategic tool that would empower them to optimize their operations, streamline staff scheduling, and enhance ingredient procurement.
Methodology:
Our approach involved a multi-faceted strategy:
- Data integration: We collected, cleaned, and integrated data from cash registers, menu's, weather sources, seasonal patterns, company holidays, and more, to create a comprehensive dataset spanning two years.
- Feature engineering: We crafted meaningful features from the raw data, allowing the algorithm to capture intricate relationships between variables. This process included extracting customer sentiment from reviews, identifying seasonal trends, and creating day-of-week and holiday indicators.
- Machine Learning model development: We designed, trained, and tested a robust machine learning model capable of forecasting restaurant visitors accurately.
- Evaluation: To ensure the model's effectiveness, we utilized appropriate evaluation metrics, including Root Mean Squared Logarithmic Error (RMSLE), which is particularly suited for restaurant forecasting. This metric quantifies prediction accuracy while penalizing overestimation, crucial for cost-sensitive industries like foodservice.
Outcomes:
Our data-driven solution offers several significant benefits to the customer and the wider restaurant industry:
- Improved operational efficiency: With accurate visitor forecasts, the customer now can optimize staff schedules, ensuring the right number of employees are available during peak hours, while reducing costs during slower times.
- Enhanced customer experience: The ability to anticipate customer numbers allows for better service and shorter wait times, leading to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Reduced food waste: Precise ingredient procurement aligns with expected customer volumes, minimizing food wastage and associated costs.
- Competitive advantage: Armed with actionable insights, the customer can stay ahead of competitors by offering superior service, even in highly competitive markets.
- Adaptability: The model's adaptability allows it to incorporate new data sources and evolving customer trends, ensuring continued accuracy.
Next Steps:
As we move forward, Beyond the Cloud remains committed to refining and expanding our data-driven solution.
Future work includes fine-tuning: Continuously optimizing the forecasting model to enhance accuracy and robustness, Scalability: Extending the solution to cater to a broader range of restaurants and foodservice businesses, Integration: Seamlessly integrating additional data sources, such as social media sentiment analysis and local event calendars, to enhance prediction capabilities and adding a User-Interface: Developing an intuitive user interface to provide the staff with easy access to predictions and insights.
Beyond the Cloud's collaboration with the customers' in company catering unit demonstrates the transformative potential of data-driven solutions in the restaurant industry. By accurately forecasting daily customer footfall, we empower businesses to make informed decisions, reduce costs, and enhance the overall dining experience. As we continue to refine and expand our solution, we remain committed to driving innovation and efficiency in the foodservice sector.