How a quick-service restaurant chain boosts revenue with Viam’s AI-powered food display optimization

Empty & unappealing food displays hurt sales

Food displays are critical to driving sales, especially in busy, high-traffic areas. When displays are full and inviting, customers are significantly more likely to approach, perceive the food as fresh and delicious, and buy something to eat. However, in fast-paced environments, displays can quickly become empty after a rush, giving the impression that food is unavailable and just not inviting, discouraging purchases. 

Keeping displays consistently stocked is challenging during demand surges. Employees often lack training to manage high volumes, and limited management staff can't monitor displays in real time. Hiring more staff is both costly and impractical.

The customer needed to ensure displays stayed on track. They wanted to:

• Collect and monitor real-time data on display conditions
• Ensure displays are consistently full and appealing
• Train employees with new insights to optimize sales

Alternative solutions involving complex workflows and excessive human interventions proved costly and cumbersome. They needed a flexible, reliable, and affordable solution.

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Scalable & efficient AI-driven QA drives purchase intent

Viam proposed a solution using existing cameras to monitor, maintain, and optimize displays:

1. Capture image data from existing hardware and securely send it to the cloud
2. Leverage AI/ML on data in the cloud to learn how to identify food to be refreshed
3. Monitor stores with unreliable connectivity for display maintenance opportunities
4. Remotely deploy updates, models, and insights to connected components and workforce training portals, ensuring displays are optimized for sales

Easy & secure data collection: Integrate with any hardware, sensors, and cameras to easily capture data or images and upload them securely to the Viam cloud, creating a fast path to ML learning workflows.

A powerful, unified cloud: Leverage unlimited cloud storage and compute to train new models from larger data sets as needed, driving optimizations for smarter machines and better products.

Built-in machine learning: Use a simple image labeling interface and native ML pipelines to quickly learn from real images, identifying good outcomes and evaluating merchandising at each step—no complex integrations required.

Smooth smart upgrades: Enable one-click model deployment and seamless over-the-air updates, ensuring machines run smoothly with the latest, most efficient software.

Resilient edge scoring: Facilitate uninterrupted functionality with local scoring models, eliminating Wi-Fi dependencies and maintaining performance in any connectivity environment.

Universal compatibility: Allow smooth integration with any hardware and software components, enabling enhanced data sharing and interoperation regardless of manufacturer.

Viam’s cutting-edge solution empowered the customer to automate quality assurance, streamline insights, and fast-track innovation with remarkable anticipated outcomes. Early pilots showed high accuracy in AI/ML models, with expectations to achieve near-perfect precision within a few months. The solution also significantly accelerated deployment speed, outpacing traditional costly integrations. Additionally, steady annual revenue growth is projected, driven by enhanced sales performance in front of the optimized displays.