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Cofoco optimizes bookings using AI

Cofoco (Copenhagen Food Collective) is a restaurant chain with 18 different restaurants and 2 hotels around Copenhagen. The restaurants have different types of cuisine such as Nordic, Japanese, French, Italian etc., and which together contain a wealth of options from the intimate couple's dinner to parties and large events with up to several hundred people. 

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<h1><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW6112065 BCX0">Cofoco optimizes bookings <span class="text-athletic-green">using AI</span></span></h1> <p><span class="NormalTextRun SCXW6112065 BCX0">Cofoco (Copenhagen Food Collective) is a restaurant chain with 18 different restaurants and 2 hotels around Copenhagen. The restaurants have different types of cuisine such as Nordic, Japanese, French, Italian etc., and which together contain a wealth of options from the intimate couple's dinner to parties and large events with up to several hundred people.&nbsp;</span></p>

Challenge

Cofoco uses a digital booking system, where customers can easily book and cancel a reservation with up to 8 guests at the 18 restaurants. However, for bookings over 8 people, it is Cofoco's Booking team that handles the bookings manually. A piece of work that takes place across many systems and is often complex depending on the wishes for the reservation, e.g. table setup, kitchen type, own room, etc.   

Today, it is incredibly time-consuming to onboard new employees in the Booking team due to the complexity and the many systems that employees must be able to navigate. A complexity that increases every time Cofoco opens new restaurants and hotels. Among other things, it is this complexity that Cofoco wants to reduce by instead working smarter and at the same time being able to open new restaurants without increasing the size of the Booking team. 

Solution

Cofoco came to Kraftvaerk to get help with a solution that could create a better overview and optimize the workflows for the Booking team for large bookings. Through a Discovery Process, we uncovered challenges and workflows in collaboration with Cofoco's Booking team, after which it was concretized and collected in a Service Blueprint. This led to the development of two AI solutions: 

  • AI integration to TopDesk, which can quickly and simply summarize a long booking correspondence between Cofoco and the customer 
  • A complex RAG powered AI solution that acts as an AI booking agent that can quickly collect relevant information across Cofoco's many IT systems and make the work easier for the Booking team. 

Digitizing Cofoco's Booking team

The first step towards digitizing Cofoco's Booking team was to uncover workflows together with Cofoco to gain insights into their work and what opportunities there would be to optimize the processes.  

We did this, among other things, through observations and interviews with the Booking team and with customers, by analyzing the systems and their data, and mapping the different flows in a Service Blueprint. Here it became clear that the Booking team for large group bookings (teams, events, special occasions) navigates in 5-6 systems to get an overview of seating plans, menus, types of cuisine, budget and other practicalities in addition to the email correspondence with the customer.

“Kraftvaerk's process helped us get an overview of our workflow and booking systems, which made it possible to understand the complexity in what we do. The insights helped us identify our challenges with large group bookings and combine the right data points to solve it. That has enabled us to prioritise what to do on a short and long term.”  

- Helle-Louise Roed, Head of Sales & Booking, COFOCO 

Meet 'Lotte' – Cofoco's new AI booking agent

Based on the findings in the Discovery Process, we started developing a complex AI solution that works as an AI booking agent that can easily and quickly navigate and find information across Cofoco's many IT-systems. The AI agent has been named 'Lotte' and based on prompt, 'Lotte' collects the requested information across Cofoco's systems and sends it back to the employee.  

Today, the Booking team uses 'Lotte' to put together suggestions for menus based on the individual restaurants' offerings and based on price levels, which are usually defined by the customer. Example, prompt from the Booking team: 'Put together a menu for a maximum of DKK 450.' The employee will then receive suggestions for composed menus for a maximum of DKK 450 from Cofoco's restaurants.  

Thus, 'Lotte' makes it significantly faster for the Booking team to get a comprehensive overview of the options and complete booking offers for the customer.

The AI button that gathers the threads

In addition to the many IT systems that the Booking team must navigate, company reservations also require long email correspondence, where opportunities and clarifications with the customer are sent back and forth. Maintaining an overview can be confusing and time-consuming for an individual employee, and when handing over internally to colleagues, the likelihood of errors increases significantly.

To help the Booking team create an overview of the long correspondences, we developed an AI integration for TopDesk, which at the touch of a button quickly and simply summarizes the correspondence, which can subsequently be used as a starting point for the final contract with the customer. 

Results

The AI agent 'Lotte' and AI integration to TopDesk have contributed to increased efficiency of the Booking team:

  • Quick and easy to get an overview of the possibilities across the many systems, restaurants and hotels  
  • Reduced time spent on booking larger parties 
  • Streamlined workflows in the Booking team  
  • Fewer errors in internal handovers and in quotes to customers, contributing to better customer experiences 

In addition, the hope is that 'Lotte' can contribute to shorter and more efficient onboarding of new employees in the Booking team and at the same time help streamline Cofoco's business as new restaurants and hotels are added, but without having to scale the Booking team dramatically.

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