AI Forecasting For The Hospitality Industry

Predict future demand, take control of your labor and inventory budgets, and grow at an unprecedented scale.

Act on Intelligent Predictive Insights

Fourth’s Hospitality AI Forecasting engine uses state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms to analyze your company’s data to quickly detect patterns, learn trends, and identify event outliers so you can confidently plan for future demand.

When coupled with our workforce and inventory software, AI Demand Forecasts create actionable insights that automate decision-making, allowing operators to save time, reduce waste, and boost profitability.

Click the play button to take a quick product tour and see how AI Forecasting impacts scheduling.

How to Make Demand Forecasting Your Competitive Advantage

Amid the dynamic restaurant industry, an ongoing challenge is accurate demand forecasting. Relying on traditional models leads to scheduling errors and inefficiencies. Why?

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How (and How Not) to Accelerate Hourly Recruiting with AI

Amid labor shortages, industries turn to AI for quicker hourly hiring. Yet, balancing benefits with AI risks is crucial for success.

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The top 3 AI solutions for back of house operations

From more efficient hiring practices to optimizing scheduling and inventory management, here are the top 3 ways to optimize your back of house operations with the help of AI.

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How it Works

Created from the largest repository of data-- collected from serving more than 100,000 locations globally and 14 of the top 20 restaurant chains-- Fourth’s AI Forecast delivers unmatched accuracy.

Data Collection

Fourth’s AI Forecasting algorithm performs an in-depth analysis of intrinsic and external data points including 7+ years of historical sales data, guest counts, in-store prom

Data Preprocessing

The algorithm cleans the data by detecting and removing event outliers, increasing the accuracy of the forecast.

Data Training

The algorithm trains itself by analyzing its forecasted vs. actual results. With each new data point, the algorithm continues to refine the equation, making daily improvements.

“We have seen a 25% accuracy improvement on the previous system forecast. The model gives managers a more accurate baseline from which they can build and tweak using their own knowledge and experience to deliver a highly accurate forecast.”

— Graham Fenwick, Productivity & Change Director, Pizza Express

Predict the Future

Fourth’s Hospitality AI Forecasting algorithm performs an in-depth analysis of intrinsic and external data points including 7+ years of historical sales data, guest counts, in-store promotions, holidays, and more.

Save Time

Synch with our workforce and inventory management solutions to automate forecasting, scheduling, and purchasing.

Reduce Costs

Systematically eliminate costly inefficiencies like under and overstaffing and food waste.

Confidently Plan for the Future

Control Labor Budgets in HotSchedules

Restaurants lose an average of 10-25% of gross revenue per location when not staffed properly to meet demand.

Avoid becoming another statistic with demand-driven scheduling from HotSchedules, allowing managers to easily create schedules that match forecasted demand while balancing customized labor rules, compliance, and employee preferences.

Learn how businesses like yours lower labor budget

Reduce Waste in MacromatiX – Coming Soon!

Trust Fourth’s AI Demand Forecasting to guide your end-to-end inventory management. When used with MacromatiX, our leading inventory solution, managers will receive actionable recommendations for ordering, prep and production, and recipe and menu management.

Learn more about MacromatiX

Give Managers the Gift of Time

To retain frontline managers, organizations need to empower their people with the necessary tools, data, and support to remove administrative burdens and develop their competencies and wellbeing.

Hospitality AI Forecasting takes the mundane but critical task of forecasting off their to-do list so they can focus their energy on creating strategic promotions and memorable guest experiences.

“Seeing into the future is no easy task, even for the most experienced operator. The best attribute of AI forecasting is its ability to continuously learn and improve its algorithm, creating a highly personalized forecasting model executed at scale. Overtime, this model can systematically eliminate inefficiencies like under and overstaffing.”

— Christian Berthelsen, CTO, Fourth

Read more from Restaurant Dive

Measuring Accuracy with WAPE

The Weighted Absolute Percentage of Error (WAPE) is a way to measure how accurate a forecast is. WAPE takes into account the difference between the forecasted value and the actual value, as well as the importance of each forecasted value, hence the term “weighted.”

WAPE allows you to measure how far off a forecast is from the actual values, regardless of whether the forecast over estimated or underestimated the actual values.

The lower the WAPE, the better, indicating the forecast is closer to the actual value.

  • Is Standard Hospitality Forecasting or AI Hospitality Forecasting better for my business?
    • Standard forecasting is great for new businesses or smaller operations relying on Excel sheets or manual equations to forecast demand. Standard forecasting helps automate the process, allowing managers to forecast demand based on historical sales data from manager-selected weeks and their personal knowledge of upcoming events. AI Forecasting is ideal for growing and national chains or any operations with high variability in demand. This forecast will completely automate the entire process for every location. Better yet, it will continuously improve the forecasting calculation, so your company benefits from small but daily improvements on an ongoing basis.
  • What sets Fourth’s AI Forecast apart from other algorithms?
    • Through market leadership in serving more than 100,000 locations globally and 14 of the top 20 US restaurant chains, Fourth has compiled the largest repository of restaurant data to create AI forecasting with unmatched accuracy. Fourth’s AI forecasting performs an in-depth analysis of historical sales data, guest counts, in-store promotions, holidays, and more to provide unprecedented insight into labor scheduling and inventory management. The solution gives restaurants the ability to optimize their operations across all locations with unparalleled accuracy through predictions of customer demand.

What’s the secret to improved profitability? The ability to predict the future.

Skip the crystal ball and learn how Fourth’s AI Forecasting is helping the hospitality industry predict future demand.

Our team would love to hear from you

Give us a call today +1 (877) 539-5156, or click the button below.