MenuSifu at NRA 2024 booth 6658
Chicago, May 18, 2024 – MenuSifu is celebrating its 10-year anniversary as a foodservice digital solutions provider by launching a series of new products and partnerships that will transform restaurant automation.
Opening its largest presence at the National Restaurant Association Show (NRA) in Chicago this year, MenuSifu is releasing new products and announcing that it is a business partner and investor in Happy Cashier and is partnering with Hestia, two companies delivering groundbreaking restaurant automation.
Happy Cashier is bringing digitization to the front of house with virtual cashiers that help restaurants reduce costs and maximize staff productivity. This technology, as reported by the New York Times, CNBC, Fortune, and more allows guests to be greeted, place their order and pay all through a remote attendant, often actually located in another country. As many restaurants struggle with both labor shortages and increasing costs, this solution is already helping restaurants stay afloat and productive across New York, with major expansion plans on the horizon.
Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Hestia has designed an automated cooking machine that makes a dizzying array of dishes and even cleans itself. While still relatively new to the market with customers in the US, Japan, and Hong Kong, these precision machines have proven to use up to 50% less gas, 60% less oil, and 65% less water than traditional cooking practices. A 66% labor cost reduction has also been observed through the 10+ restaurants using Hestia products to date, while allowing kitchen staff to be more productive in other tasks.
MenuSifu is also releasing its own new products including POS devices tailored for take-out restaurants (POS LITE), standard POS system (POS MX), a POS Pay Pad, E-Menu, Loyalty and Marketing software systems, and Waitlist & Reservation systems. The technology allows Happy Cashier and Hestia to seamlessly integrate their products into the MenuSifu POS system.
“Restaurants that choose to partner with MenuSifu have the advantage of combining all this functionality under one roof,” notes MenuSifu Founder and co-CEO Yu Li. “These devices, including our partner products at Hestia and Happy Cashier, are all interconnected making restaurant digitization and automation even more cost effective.”
Connecting and automating points in the restaurant
Years of product development and solving foodservice industry pain points have now come together in these solutions from MenuSifu and its partners for a wholistic digital solution package known as “1+2+4+N”. The 1 refers to MenuSifu’s POS system that combines ordering, payments, inventory, and cloud services to interconnect restaurant systems. The 2 refers to the new partnerships with Happy Cashier and Hestia that combine virtual servers in the front of house with an automated cooking machine in the back of house. While the 4 refers to the four different automation zones including the virtual cashier, robotic cook, payments, and online ordering. Finally, the N refers to a wide range of additional products from MenuSifu that add advanced technology to restaurant settings while reducing costs including ordering kiosks, scan-to-order functionality, waitlist and reservation systems, and more.
“I have always felt that not enough technology innovation is happening in the restaurant industry,” said Yu Li. “When you combine all of these technologies though, the restaurant becomes completely reimagined, opening all kinds of new possibilities for the things that matter most to customers – consistent and top-quality food, great services, and affordable prices.”
Founded by researchers and engineers at Columbia University, MenuSifu has steadily progressed development of inter-connected digital restaurant solutions with a focus on Asian restaurants around the world. The company now serves over 12,000 global clients with its expanding technology services. Considered a mid-sized startup company, MenuSifu now employs over 200 staff around the world and over $30 mil in fundraising investments. Each year its solutions serve an estimated 100 million tables.
The National Restaurant Association Show (NRA) is the world’s most influential showcase of foodservice innovation, with the 2024 show expected to draw over 2,200 exhibitors. The MenuSifu team and co-CEOs Yu Li and Andy Chen will be at NRA 2024 in Chicago from May 18 – 21 at booth 6658 in the North Building.
