Restaurant Brands Europe (RBE), which runs fast food restaurants including Burger King and Tim Hortons across Spain, Italy and Portugal, has installed new technology to improve demand forecasting and automate ingredient replenishment.

The quick service restaurant (QSR) operator will roll out the technology across over 1,350 locations.

RBE said that because it supplies food to a high-volume, fast-moving restaurant environment, its product availability and waste reduction must be carefully balanced, with perishable goods requiring accurate, location-level forecasting.

The new technology generates orders based on local demand, meaning that locations have the right ingredients when they need them, reducing excess inventory and reducing food waste across restaurants with different demand patterns.

RBE has partnered with retail technology firm RELEX to install the technology.

Before implementing the technology, RBE worked with an established planning tool complemented by some manual processes.

While this approach supported the company’s growth, the company said that the acceleration of expansion and increasing operational complexity made it necessary to roll out a more scalable and automated solution capable of responding consistently to changes in restaurant-level demand.

“We needed a planning system that could support our scale today and adapt as we continue to expand,” said Alejandro Gutiérrez Álvarez, director of operations strategy at Restaurant Brands Europe. “Improving forecast accuracy and automating ordering will help our teams focus on running restaurants, while giving us better control over availability and waste across all markets.”

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