AI Table Tracking for Restaurants: What Can Your Security Cameras Do?

Most restaurants have security cameras, but they’re usually only used to look back after something has happened. Yet the same cameras could also help you see which table is waiting at peak hours. That’s exactly why we’re building Mihman AI, together with our first restaurants.

What is restaurant camera analysis?

Put simply, it means understanding the status of your tables from what your existing cameras see: is the table occupied or free, have guests just sat down, are they waiting for the bill, is it ready to be cleared?

With Mihman, footage is processed on the device in the restaurant; it isn’t recorded, and it isn’t sent to the cloud or abroad. There’s no facial recognition; it looks at tables, not people. Rather than installing a new camera system, our aim is to make use of the cameras you already have.

Smart table tracking: what are we aiming for?

• Seeing how long a table has been waiting to be greeted, to order or for the bill
• Tracking how long it takes for a freed-up table to be ready again (table turnover time)
• Seeing occupancy and capacity use on one screen during peak hours
• Alerting the right person when a table is waiting: greeting goes to the waiter, clearing to the busser, a free table to the host

We’ll measure how useful this information actually is on your floor together with you during the pilot.

How will it work with your POS system?

Mihman doesn’t replace your POS system; orders and payments stay in your POS as usual.

At a later stage, we plan to look at table information together with POS data. For example, seeing the time from when guests sit down to when the order is entered or the bill is paid, or looking at how busy the room is alongside your sales data in one place. We’ll decide which POS systems and which data to start with together with our pilot restaurants.

Multi-branch restaurant operations

The most common concern we hear from restaurant chains is that the guest experience differs from branch to branch. Our aim is a setup that runs by the same rules in every branch and alerts that branch’s team when a table is waiting.

We also plan to let you compare table occupancy, capacity use and table turnover time across branches on one screen at head office. What you see is the status of tables; there are no staff scores and no tracking of individuals. We describe our approach for chains in more detail on our restaurant chains page.

You don’t have to watch the cameras all the time

On a busy evening, nobody can sit in front of a monitor. The goal is to notice when a table starts waiting, so you don’t have to, and tell the right person.

If you’d like to see how Mihman would work in your dining room, let’s set up a free demo.