Amadeus tucks into Tenzo’s $5m bid to supercharge restaurant performance

Tenzo, an AI-powered restaurant PerformanceOps platform, has raised a $5 million Series A round led by Amadeus Capital Partners in Cambridge and S28 Capital.

Founded by two Cambridge computer scientists – one turned restaurateur – Tenzo is on a mission to use AI to help restaurants focus on improving their performance in order to optimise efficiency and increase revenue.

At the same time the tech is set to lessen the impact the restaurant industry has on the environment through food waste, which is estimated to contribute to 530 million tonnes of CO2 emissions and more than $100 billion in lost revenue globally. 

Now used by more than 1,500 restaurants worldwide, such as Nando’s, TGI Fridays, and Vapiano brands, Tenzo ingests massive amounts of data in real time using a proprietary Extract, Transform, Load engine, then leverages deep learning to make intelligent operational recommendations. 

Tenzo’s team of world-class engineers and data scientists are now building off the huge advances in large language models to make interactions easier than ever before and ensure that insights will be communicated to restaurants in the right way.

“Digitisation, especially action from data-driven insight, has been slow to penetrate the food and beverage industry,” says Manjari Chandran-Ramesh, Partner at Amadeus Capital Partners.

“While the pandemic has accelerated this adoption, most Restaurant PerformanceOps rely on experience instead of augmenting that with forecasting using learning models and relevant data.

“Consequently, the restaurant industry is one of the biggest contributors to food waste. Tenzo’s innovative solution leverages the power of AI using the most appropriate data sources and pertinent models. The PerformanceOps product enables restaurants of all sizes to optimise their operations and reduce food waste, making them more sustainable and profitable.”

This Series A funding round comes after tripling the number of customer locations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hospitality C-suite executives saw the integration of digital platforms as their main challenge during COVID; this increased volatility put more focus on planning.

This funding will help Tenzo on its roadmap to deliver on ambitious growth goals, following on from its partnership with Innovate UK – centred around developing the most accurate sales forecasting platform for restaurants using AI and machine learning – aiming to save the industry around 75,000 tons of food waste globally by 2027.