Shire AI

Shire’s mission is to close the gap between how restaurants operate today and how they could if they used the information they already have. We believe every restaurant deserves a system that actually sees their business and tells them exactly what to do next.

Alex and I have known each other since kindergarten, and when we worked in the same restaurant we would have to walk around the restaurant to manually update table states and route waiters accordingly. Although this system may seem fine, it was plagued with a couple consistent issues: there was no way to route waiters fairly besides simple rotations, so servers would many times feel shorted and yell at us. And during a rush, when turning tables matters most, we were too busy seating customers to actually update the states. We created Shire to automate this process with computer vision, allowing hosts to hyperfocus on hospitality and giving the restaurant a floor that actually sees itself. Restaurants are already one of the most inefficient industries in the country, and once you look closely, it's a Pandora's box. With turnover rates exceeding 75%, margins averaging 3-5% and frequently going negative, and constant chaos on the floor, restaurant owners are constantly overwhelmed. On top of that, they have to navigate a bunch of point solutions that lack any real integration with one another. We believe that by creating a fully connected intelligence layer for restaurants, one that connects menu intelligence to turn times, schedules to CCTV and POS signals, and multi-bandit optimizes pricing in real time, we can give restaurant owners the data edge seen in other industries like logistics. And for an industry running on margins this thin, that edge can realistically double them.