SousZen Inc.
Next Gen software to orchestrate restaurant kitchens - Think Gordon Ramsey without the F word
$133,085
Highlights
Our Team
Now is the time to disrupt the kitchen
"It’s about not just doing well, cooking well. It’s cooking well always. Always being on time. Always being ready. Always making it the same way." Anthony Bourdain
As the restaurant industry recovers from downturn, and stagnation, during the global COVID Pandemic, operators, especially in the US, are facing new headwinds. Labor constraints impact Front-of-house and back-of-house execution and guest experience, and rising food cost inflation is impacting menu profitability. Together these two factors make a focus on automation and business intelligent key to a restaurants success. SousZen technology addresses these pain points by helping train staff, managing food costs, monitoring food waste, and managing inventory back-of-house.
Focus on the kitchen
Unlike the majority of solutions, we focus on the kitchen – where 75 percent of all costs reside and where profits are made (and lost). Surviving in the post-Covid world will depend on getting these costs in hand.
We solve restaurant owners' four main pain points:
1. Consistent Food quality - Deliver the same food time after time
2. Keeping staff trained and effective
3. Inventory management without counting
4. Manage menus, recipes, ingredients and vendors
Benefits
Our products
Three products deliver back-of-house orchestration across food preparation, menu, recipe, ingredient management, and flavor insights.
We reproduce the chef's art in software - managing menus, recipes, ingredients, suppliers, and food prep to deliver great food. From menu management and publishing to food preparation, SousZen streamlines operations to maximize visibility and efficiency.
The expeditor role and back-of-house management can now be handed over to software.
Manager™ Web App
Targeted at the manager of a single-location kitchen, the Manager™ app controls food costs and supply by tracking raw ingredients, monitoring consumption, and predicting inventory.
Manager™ also includes a menu publishing capability to help users maintain their online presence. It also provides easy integration with most POS systems. The first three locations are free, then $50 per month
Expeditor™ Mobile App
Expeditor™ is powered by the first-ever real-time decision engine for the commercial kitchen.
The Expeditor Engine™ continuously evaluates the configuration and runtime variables in the kitchen and provides optimized instructions to kitchen staff. The Expeditor™ app orchestrates meal prep from orders through to delivery. It will be essential as kitchens adopt robotic appliances. $75 per month per station
Advisor™ Web App
Advisor™ is targeted at the owner or supervisor of multiple kitchens. It collects and analyzes data across one or multiple locations to inform decision–making. It's the business's insight center. $ 30 to access data at each location.
Why Now?
A key market driver is the growing consumer demand for freshly prepared, locally sourced, organic food (67% of consumers expressed this preference in a recent survey). But these ‘à la minute’ types of restaurants have typically been impossible to scale – until now.
The latest digital technology, low-cost tablets and other portable devices, and the acceptance of industry disruption have all come together to make SousZen possible.
What problem does our tech solve?
The only way to make money with freshly prepared food concepts is to expand into multiple locations. But taking a successful restaurant concept and replicating it is never easy.
Chains and fast casual restaurants often resort to pre-cooked, industrialized ingredients and menu simplification to expand their business – options not viable for food service outlets that want to meet the demand for freshly-cooked food.
SousZen is solving the problem through the use of software. Using the next-generation digital technology to orchestrate and simplify complex kitchen operations.
How SousZen supports restaurants after Covid
With the arrival of Covid, there’s the opportunity and need to bring the kitchen out of the dark ages in terms of the application of technology and use it to deliver efficiency and improved margins.
We have a license-fee model based on number of sites. We will offer Manager for free for the first three locations and then $50 per month per additional site. This will help up-and coming restaurant businesses survive and thrive.
Setting SousZen apart from our competitors
The focus of tech investment has typically been at the front-of-house (FOH), not the back of house, or kitchen, where a business lives or dies. It has left restaurant kitchens relatively tech free, and procedures and processes relying on outdated systems, or worse, no systems at all.
What's the size of the market?
Our focus is on owners of restaurants with freshly prepared food concepts, with multiple locations, looking to expand. These are our sweet spot. There are over 200,000 such locations in the US and 1m worldwide.
The food service market is currently worth US$3 trillion. An estimated 1% is spent on software tools - that's US$30bn.
Our customers
We developed our initial offerings together with PepsiCo Mexico for their brand TostiCentros. TostiCentros is a lightweight model where entrepreneurs are provided banding and ingredients. It has grown like crazy and now exceeds 13,000 locations. Pep wants a level of control, help entrepreneurs be better business people, and get insights into ingredient trends. These challenges are solved by SousZen. PepsiCo purchases our software and bundles it with a tablet and give it to the locations (just like a refrigerator). They will roll out 2500 locations as soon as covid overhang lifts for annual revenue of $500K+ per year, gowing to over 10,000 locations over time. This product is delivered in Spanish, our English product has been launched in Australia and USA in August. You can see the Tosti Centros TV ad below