London, November 13, Food waste is a huge issue in the UK hospitality industry. The sector wastes over 1 million tonnes of food every year, amounting to over 4.5 million tonnes in CO2 emissions and costing the industry over £3.2 billion in lost revenue. Tenzo and Innovate UK ‘s newest project is set to change that.

  • Food waste contributes to £3.2 billion in lost revenue & 4.5 million tonnes of CO2 emitted in the UK restaurant industry
  • £220,000 in funding from Innovate UK will kickstart Tenzo’s AI forecasting project

  • New forecasting solution will be used by current Tenzo customers such as Nando’s, Pizza Pilgrims, The Fat Duck and 10,000 more locations by 2025

  • Platform will reduce CO2 emissions by 800,000 tonnes by 2025 and save restaurant industry £100 million in costs

Co-funded by the UK’s innovation agency, Innovate UK, Tenzo is embarking on a £500,000 mission to create the most accurate sales forecasting platform for restaurants using artificial intelligence and machine learning. This will improve on Tenzo’s existing forecasting software which already increases forecast accuracy by 30-50% compared to traditional methods.


This new platform will forecast sales at an hourly and item level allowing operators to both order and prepare accurate amounts of food and significantly reduce the amount of waste generated.

We already know that 2020 has been a catastrophic year for the restaurant industry as a whole. Hospitality has always been a tight margin business, with successful restaurants operating on a 3-5% profit margin, but Covid-19 has made these already slim margins even slimmer. Just yesterday, Young’s Pubs announced that the last six months have been one of the toughest periods in their 189-year history. The situation is grave: if restaurants want to survive, operators simply cannot afford to throw away food.

“Reducing the amount of food wasted has always been a priority for me. This funding from Innovate UK will allow us to provide the tools for restaurants to get one step closer to carbon neutrality and significantly reduce the effect our industry has on the planet. Additionally, our accurate forecasting will save millions in costs in a sector that has been severely economically impacted by Covid-19.” – Christian Mouysset, Tenzo CEO
and Co-founder.

Tenzo is committed to helping restaurateurs survive this unprecedented period with the help of accurate data and forecasts. This new solution should therefore save the industry £100 million in wasted food by 2025.

Customers testing out the prototype have already been impressed. Moji Neshat, CEO of Nando’s Singapore has stated, “Tenzo’s forecasting solution combines machine learning with an easy-to-use mobile app for restaurant managers. This has helped us increase our labour productivity by 15% and has continued to perform well since the Covid-19 outbreak.”


food waste



But beyond saving cost, what people don’t realise is how much food waste contributes to global warming in the form of carbon emissions. In fact, if food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of CO2 after China and the US and 30% of that waste comes from the restaurant industry. But thanks to this latest innovation, we hope to reduce carbon emissions by 800,000 tonnes by 2025.

The coming months and years may be tough for the restaurant sector both financially and environmentally, but Tenzo is now poised to give restaurateurs the tools they need to be as successful as possible.