The outlet
Rolls and bowls format, Baner High Street, Petpooja POS since 2022. Weekday lunch is office delivery; weekends are walk-in families. No dine-in liquor. Aggregator share runs 68-76% depending on the week. Historically, prep was set by the owner's WhatsApp gut check at 10am — adequate on Tuesdays, wasteful on salary-cycle Fridays.
Onboarding: 9 minutes
- Petpooja API — read-only credentials; no menu changes.
- Recipe mapping — top 12 SKUs by revenue; auto-suggest matched 10; two manual portion tweaks on protein bowls.
- Fixed costs — rent, three salary lines, utilities entered once.
- First sync — 60 days of order history overnight; forecast live next morning.
Forecast accuracy at day 30
| Metric | Before | After | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dish-level forecast accuracy (MAPE) | N/A (no forecast) | 91% | — |
| Daily cover-count accuracy | ±22% vs actual | 94% | +72 pts |
| Over-prep waste (₹/day) | ₹1,800-2,400 | ₹580-820 | −68% |
| Prep planning time | 35-40 min | 8-10 min | −74% |
| Salary-cycle Friday miss | Discovered at 1pm | Flagged Tuesday brief | +3 days lead |
Top 12 SKUs account for 81% of revenue. Forecast accuracy on those SKUs was 91%; long-tail items (13-22) ran 78% — acceptable because prep batches are shared across bowl formats.
What the forecast caught that intuition missed
- Salary-cycle Friday spike — delivery orders up 28% on the last Friday of the month; previously discovered when the chicken batch ran out at 12:30pm.
- Monday post-weekend dip — walk-in covers down 18% vs Sunday; kitchen was over-prepping Monday lunch by habit.
- Rain-day delivery shift — aggregator share jumps 12-15 pts on heavy-rain days; dine-in prep could be cut without affecting revenue.
- IPL match evenings — partial signal; forecast undershot by 18% on one Saturday. Flagged for manual override next season.
Dish-level accuracy breakdown (top 5 SKUs)
| SKU | 30-day units | Forecast MAPE | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chicken tikka roll | 1,842 | 7.1% | Stable weekday lunch driver |
| Paneer bowl | 1,204 | 8.4% | Salary-cycle spike modelled |
| Egg roll | 986 | 9.8% | Weekend-heavy; slight under-forecast |
| Peri-peri fries | 812 | 11.2% | Add-on; batch-shared with bowls |
| Mango lassi | 645 | 6.5% | Weather signal helped |
We stopped guessing chicken quantity on Friday mornings. The brief tells us Tuesday what Friday needs — we just follow it.
What the owner actually does
The 7pm brief lands with tomorrow's SKU-level prep quantities, break-even check, and any calendar flags. The owner adjusts two prep batches and occasionally shifts one cook from 11am to 10am on flagged Fridays. No daily dashboard — same push-not-pull pattern as the Hindkesari pilot.