The year for AI?

Artificial intelligence has been a buzzword in the industry for some time now, but some restaurant analysts see 2019 as a turning point for the technology — not just in terms of how operators staff and manage their businesses but in how they monitor their food supply. As ITProPortal reports, Spyce, an automated restaurant run by MIT students, is one example of a fully automated restaurant, with everything from ordering to cleaning to cooking done by machines. But even if you’re running a much lower-tech operation, AI can have applications. Aaron Cohen, co-founder and vice president of business development for CoInspect, told FastCasual that predictive AI will have increasing influence in the supply chain, helping food companies anticipate and identify problems, from product irregularities to security breaches, before they cause harm.