In parallel with their studies, Paul Barbotin, an engineering student in the 1st year at the École Centrale de Lille and Charbel Imad, a student at CentraleSupélec, teamed up in September 2020 to create Helean, a turnout prediction software specialised in the restaurant and hotel sector. The goal of this online platform is to allow structures of all sizes to access artificial intelligence in order to be more competitive: to better manage stocks, reduce food waste and optimise the number of employees.
Starting from the observation that in the restaurant sector more than 400,000 tons of food are thrown away each year, Helean offers a daily forecast of the number of customers several months in advance. The restaurateurs rely on it to manage their establishment by adapting the food orders and the workforce according to turnout.
So far, Helean has already made crowd predictions for establishments in Brittany and Occitania. Today, Paul and Charbel are looking for new restaurants from all over France to test the software’s algorithms on a larger scale.
“We want to allow small structures to easily access artificial intelligence solutions. Thus, we automate every process needed for the machine learning to lower costs. For example, we want to set up a platform to make it easier to read our customers’ data. We have also developed a dynamic dashboard that is both suitable for the greatest number and can be personalised”, Paul explains.