Houston Business Journal Names Smartbridge an Entrepreneurial Opportunity Finalist

HOUSTON, TEXAS – November 18, 2020

Houston Business Journal and BBVA hosted the Entrepreneurial Opportunity Contest to find the next inventive idea from a local small business. They specifically wanted to know how companies were innovating to create opportunities for their clients and the local market. Out of countless submissions, 4 finalists were chosen including Smartbridge!

Once selected to compete in the contest’s finalist round, our CEO and founder, Sri Raju, created a short video pitch and attended a question and answer session with a distinguished panel of judges. The winner was then announced at the Houston Business Journal’s virtual event, “Cultivating Growth: Strategies to advance your business” and awarded a prize of $10,000 to put toward their idea.

“Well, what was your innovative idea?” you might be asking. That would be our kitchen automation software technology for restaurants, Grillmaster. With our solution, restaurants can bring automation to the cooking process by directing the cook when and how much (say, chicken) to place on the grill, when to ‘hold’, and when to dispose of unsold protein to maintain food quality. The technology enables restaurants to deliver a better customer experience, stay compliant with food safety, keep food waste down to a minimum, and manage inventory more efficiently. Grillmaster runs on a tablet next to the grill and uses artificial intelligence to analyze historical sales, current sales trends, and other external factors to forecast food requirements accurately.

However, Grillmaster could be so much more and help a wide variety of restaurants with additional machine learning and AI development. Our future plans include investing further into KitchIntel to create a more advanced solution for the food service industry. As COVID-19 will remain a constant challenge for restaurants in the near future, Smartbridge brings a degree of security knowing that employees can quickly adapt to changing demands and optimize the kitchen efficiencies in a time when everything wasted matters.