Why I'm building bilz.ai

A restaurant can be full every night and still lose money. Food cost moves every week, and many owners see the real number only when the accountant closes the month.

I co-founded bilz.ai to close that gap. bilz.ai is an AI back office for independent restaurants, cafés and bars, and for groups that run several locations. It tracks food cost, supplier invoices, recipe costs, stock and orders, and shows profit every day.

Where the money goes

Food cost leaks in small amounts. A supplier raises a price, a delivery arrives short, a dish costs more to make than it did when the menu price was set. Each one is small. Across hundreds of invoice lines and thousands of plates, they decide whether the month ends in profit.

Catching those leaks starts with the invoices, because that is where prices change. Typing hundreds of invoice lines in by hand is work a busy kitchen has no time for.

The invoice is the input

bilz.ai does the typing. Staff take a photo of the invoice, upload a PDF or forward the supplier’s email, and bilz.ai reads every line. Ingredient prices update from what the supplier actually charged, and supplier price alerts flag the increases.

Reading invoices line by line is the kind of work I think AI should take off people’s hands. It is repetitive, it has to be exact, and when a person has to do it, it gets done late or not at all.

From prices to margin

Once ingredient prices are current, everything built on them is current too.

bilz.ai costs each recipe down to the ingredient, so the margin on every dish is visible and moves when a supplier’s price moves. Sales come in from the POS. bilz.ai integrates with Syrve, ZoneSoft and other systems, so food cost is measured against what the kitchen sold instead of an estimate.

The result is a daily P&L showing profit, food cost and expenses. When a supplier raises a price, the owner sees the effect on the margin of every dish that uses that ingredient in the same week and can change the menu price, the recipe or the supplier.

Stock and orders on the floor

The bilz.ai mobile app handles stock counts, waste and stock alerts, and lets a team capture invoices from the floor. Repeat orders go to suppliers by email or SMS, straight from the app.

Asking about the numbers

Owners don’t have to learn a reporting tool to use their data. They can ask bilz.ai a question by voice or in chat, and they can drop in an Excel file, a PDF or a Word document, such as a supplier price list or a recipe book, and bilz.ai works with it.

One price per location

bilz.ai charges one price per location, with no brackets by restaurant size. Plans start at €29 a month, with Pro at €69 and Business at €99.