Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing Indonesia’s food and beverage (F&B) industry, with the technology credited for boosting the revenue of businesses in the sector by up to 40%.
PT Esensi Solusi Buana (ESB), a provider of restaurant management solutions based in Tangerang in Indonesia’s Banten Province, says its AI-driven solution OLIN delivers 90% accuracy in sales forecasting and provides actionable recommendations for menu optimization, pricing strategies, and fraud prevention, significantly enhancing F&B business operations.
According to Gunawan Woen, co-founder and chief executive officer of ESB Restaurant Technology, the company began integrating traditional AI solutions into its products before the Generative AI (GenAI) boom in late 2022. Initially, ESB’s AI offered technical insights, but the user experience was less intuitive.
With the advent of ChatGPT and the GenAI wave, ESB merged its AI technology with GenAI to develop the in-app assistant OLIN. Represented as an on-screen female colleague, OLIN allows F&B enterprises to obtain actionable insights by asking simple questions, eliminating the need for manual data analysis.
“Currently, we are in the initial phase of our AI implementation, focusing on five key areas,” Gunawan says. “We’ve achieved 90% accuracy in forecasting merchant sales. OLIN provides recommendations on menu combinations, pricing strategies, promotional activities, and fraud prevention measures, while also monitoring overall business health.”
The use of OLIN has led to significant revenue increases for F&B merchants, enhancing earnings and contributing to financial inclusion within Indonesia’s expanding economy, he notes.
Credit scoring models
ESB is developing new credit scoring models to facilitate access to bank loans and working capital for numerous F&B micro-businesses previously deemed unbankable by traditional financial institutions.
“While we are not acting as lenders ourselves, we facilitate connections between financial institutions and merchants. We’ve identified a high demand for supplier financing, which we address through our AI,” Gunawan adds.
ESB Restaurant Technology’s experience in GenAI adoption is featured in a new report by AC Ventures, which was published in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin Indonesia).
The report, Harnessing the Power of (Gen)AI in Indonesian Financial Services, explores the adoption and influence of GenAI in Indonesia’s financial sector and provides strategic insights for integrating GenAI into business operations.
According to the report, many Indonesian financial institutions are still in the early stages of GenAI implementation. Despite this, 61% of these institutions are confident in their technological infrastructure to support GenAI integration.
“Our SaaS (software-as-a-service) offerings form the core of our business, but our future revenue streams are set to expand with AI as a central driver,” says Gunawan. “Our supply chain and procurement system has been successful since launch, and our end-customer ordering system simplifies transactions while providing valuable data on customer behaviour.”
