AI Checkout in a Hospital Cafeteria:
Enhances Operational Efficiency and Dining Experience
May 30, 2024
Many large enterprises and campuses have on-site cafeterias to provide convenient meal options for employees or students during breaks, and hospitals are no exception. However, diners often lose their valuable lunch hour waiting in lengthy checkout lines, leading to frustration.
To effectively tackle this issue, an employee cafeteria at a Taipei hospital introduced Viscovery’s AI image recognition technology in October 2023. This AI-powered self-checkout system speeds up the checkout process so that the staff can promptly enjoy their meals even during peak hours.
Enhanced Dining Experience
This innovative initiative has brought great convenience to its staff. Diners now simply place their selected meals on the checkout counter, and the AI system automatically identifies each dish, making the checkout process faster. This eliminates the tedious manual identification of food items that traditional checkout systems require. Notably, the system is user-friendly, so even those who are not tech-savvy can easily navigate it. This allows the staff to fully enjoy their lunch break without having to wait for a cashier to check them out anymore.
Improved Management Efficiency
The benefits of AI image recognition technology, or can be called as vision AI, are equally significant for cafeteria operators and hospital management. During busy meal times, the kitchen can use AI to accurately record sales data, reducing errors from manual record.
With image records, the cafeteria gains insights into the foods staff like to eat and the nutrients they consume, which is particularly crucial for hospitals. With this data, the cafeteria can adapt its menu to better meet the nutritional needs of employees, further enhancing their health and work efficiency.
Not Just for Employee Cafeterias, Also for Restaurants and Food Courts
This AI-powered self-checkout system isn’t just for employee or student cafeterias; it also can be used in restaurants and food courts.
For example, “Hi Noodle,” a Chinese noodle shop under Singapore’s Haidilao, has adopted this technology. Customers can pick up pre-prepared appetizers, side dishes and desserts from a self-service area and choose corresponding cards for freshly made noodle dishes. By placing these pre-prepared food items and cards on the checkout counter, the AI system quickly identifies them, promptly proceeding to payment. This speeds up checkout, reducing wait times and giving restaurants a competitive edge.
Related Article: AI Revolutionizes Haidilao “Hi Noodle” Self-Checkout Experience
As dining technology advances rapidly, both customer dining experiences and restaurant operational efficiency have significant improved. Vision AI excels in checkout processes and is also widely applied in inventory and order inspections, food waste management, customer behavior analysis and more.
In the future, we can anticipate vision AI to expand its applications, bringing more convenience and innovation to the dining industry and beyond.
Related Article: 5 Innovative Image Recognition Applications in Food Service
