10034173Orderly: overcoming the barrier to human and resource-sustainable quick service restaurantsClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKThe number of quick-service restaurants (QSRs: sit-down, take-away and drive-thru outlets) is growing at a rate of 6% annually, across a range of organisations from multinational chains to independent stores. Despite ambitious sustainability goals, QSRs currently waste 10-15% of food/drink inventory, with typical products sold by these outlets having the highest full-lifecycle energy and CO2 impact. Efficient processes targeting zero-waste are commercially beneficial as part of the triple bottom-line, yet in this fast-moving, complex and hard-to-predict environment there is a fundamental operational/HR barrier to making effective but actionable decisions in real-time. Critically, there is currently no product/process-level data or operational mechanism to capture the specific CO2/sustainability impacts of waste into this decision-making. Whilst managers urgently require forecasting and decision-support tools, technology to augment their capability as well as support automated interventions is yet to be realised. In response, Orderly is developing intelligent inventory management solutions for QSRs, based on proprietary scorecards to identify actionable improvement-targets from basic inventory and sales data. Orderly now seek to further revolutionise QSR management via a novel Digital Store Assistant, radically extending impacts on waste and CO2\. Removing barriers to capturing rich multivariate forecasting, as well as product and process-specific sustainability data, Industrial Research now targets an AI-driven decision-support engine to underpin Balanced Sustainability Scoring developed in collaboration with University of Manchester's Alliance Manchester Business School: Underpinned by an innate understanding of the triple bottom line in terms of the three pillars of sustainability, the project is therefore able to target wider motivations to address: * The contribution of food waste to climate change * Food security, particularly given global events * Working conditions in traditionally under-appreciated hospitality sectors