CEO TALK

Duygu Kutluogly Kilic, CEO of FineDine Menu discusses an evolved, smarter dining experience through an AI-driven interface

What is your personal story?

I have been working in the technology industry for around ten years. Before that, I worked as a researcher at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne - my area of expertise was microelectronics. This was followed by my job at Huawei as a system engineer, where I later became head of PMO in Pozitron - a scaleup acquired for $100 million. I’ve always been passionate about working within and contributing to revolutionizing the F&B and Hospitality industry. With my diverse background and experience in the technology industry fueling my passion, the concept of FineDine came to life.

Define the brand.

FineDine is an AI-driven digital ordering and restaurant management platform that helps restaurant operators increase sales and customer retention, by using deep learning and data-driven insights. Our cloud-based restaurant platform offers Tablet Menu, Dine-In QR Menu, Delivery and Pick-Up Menu, and Kiosk solutions. It comes with various features that enhance the dining experience of customers.

How does FineDine Menu work for hotels and restaurants?

Depending on the needs of our customers, we offer four solutions. While some operators use only Tablets Menus, others prefer to combine it with QR Menus. There are also customers who wish to enjoy zero

commission on their online orders and prefer Delivery & Pick-Up Menus.

FineDine consists of two modules. A control panel where restaurants create, customize and edit menus and manage the orders. Second being the end-user apps, where diners browse the menus, place their orders and check-out using online payment.

FineDine collects all actions and user data. From the dashboard on the panel, the restaurants can see valuable information such as consumers’ eating habits, most preferred items, and most or least viewed items. These insights allow restaurants to understand the performance of their dishes, and re-engineer their menus to increase profits.

How has the brand disrupted the current space?

FineDine offers a smarter dining experience through artificial intelligence-driven interface. The AI collects customer behaviour insights to provide analytics and trends. For example, drinks or ideal pairings may be suggested based on customer preference or a database. Real-time data helps restaurant operators take immediate actions to increase sales and customer satisfaction. Therefore, they can focus their main goal: increasing hospitality at their venue.

In addition, AI allows operators to offer 100 per cent customised menus for their clients based on the trends, customer preferences, upcoming events and weather forecast. This feature has proven to be extremely valuable during the pandemic as operators had suffered a significant loss during this period. With data driven insights and recommendations, operators raised their revenues and profits.

How does Fine Dine Menu decrease operation costs, and furthermore, provide a seamless client experience?

The hidden cost of paper menus is incredibly high. Some outlets change their menus multiple times throughout the year. Therefore printing and the agency costs can be high. Just by switching to digital menus, operators can save a minimum USD 5,000 per year.

FineDine’s AI-powered cross-selling and promotional opportunities increase operational efficiency and ticket size. The data driven insights are perfect to upsell and cross-sell products. For example, if AI identifies that the consumers who ordered a chicken salad also ordered diet coke, when a new customer uses the menu curated by FineDine to order the chicken salad, the diet coke will be automatically suggested by the digital menu.

The app has also streamlined the ordering and check-out process and this has a huge impact on the dining experience for customers. Especially during rush hour and busy days, it can be difficult to staff the venue and make sure everyone’s satisfied. Since FineDine’s digital menus allow customers to place their order and make the payment from their menu, the ordering experience is seamless.

We also offer a multilingual feature. The app supports 40+ languages. Thanks to this feature, visitors can view the menu in their native language. This tool is perfect for venues and hotels that have international clients and consumer bases. This removes the communication barrier and allows a seamless ordering experience for the international clients.

What’s in store for the future?

We are committed to shaping restaurants and their operations, inside out. We are aiming to be the single technology solution provider for restaurants, and are actively developing our service to achieve this. Currently, we are working on enhancing an AI-driven smart recommendations module and developing AI driven marketing and CRM tools. With updated features, the businesses leveraging FineDine, will increase their online presence to attract more customers, have a better and more efficient relationship with their regular customers.