It's 11:30 at a large Norwegian hospital. The canteen has prepared lunch for 700 guests, but only about 560 show up. The next day, patient occupancy increases sharply; now the canteen risks running out of food in the middle of the lunch rush, and the canteen is also short-staffed.
Meanwhile, nursing staff on the wards spend valuable time noting what and how much patients eat, information that must later be manually entered into the medical records system. These parallel challenges are everyday life for hospitals: precisely calculated canteen operations and efficient meal registration for patients.
For canteens with 24/7 operations, whether it's hospitals, large workplaces, or other businesses with shift-based activity, unpredictable visitor numbers are one of the biggest challenges for efficient operations. But what if you could plan canteen visitor numbers with higher accuracy while also improving meal registration?
According to Matvett, approximately 451,600 tons of edible food is thrown away in Norway every year, equivalent to 82 kg per inhabitant. Traditional methods such as manual calculations and "a little extra just in case" work poorly when:
The result is overproduction, unnecessary costs, and dissatisfied guests when popular dishes sell out.
Hitting the right number of hands in the kitchen, at the checkout, and in the dishwashing area is at least as challenging – and often more expensive – than the raw materials. Wrong staffing one week can eat up all the gains from reduced food waste.
Our machine learning engine, Izy Prediction, combines these data sources:
With Izy Prediction, you get access to tools that not only simplify this process but also help reduce food waste, optimize staffing, and increase efficiency.
Izy Prediction is an AI-based solution that analyzes historical data, weather data, and transactions to provide accurate forecasts of visitor numbers and sales. Using machine learning, the system provides precise forecasts for the coming weeks. This gives canteen operations the opportunity to plan everything from purchases to staffing in a smarter and more sustainable way.
Although Izy Prediction works excellently alone, you can combine it with Izy mAIfood POS – an intelligent checkout system with image recognition that streamlines the checkout process.
Together, Izy Prediction and mAIfood POS provide a comprehensive solution that helps you:
With an annual raw material cost of NOK 4,000,000, a 10% waste cut will give savings of NOK 400,000. Even a modest reduction thus provides significant financial gains – while strengthening your sustainability profile.
Additionally, optimizing staffing for when the need is actually there, for example starting a part-time shift two hours later on quiet days, or dropping an overtime shift when the forecast shows low traffic, will provide even greater gains.
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