The restaurant and bar industry has effectively been crippled by COVID-19. The industry is seeing permanent closures at historic rates. As the economy attempts to reopen, restaurants and bars are faced restrictions when it comes to capacity.
Capacity Restrictions and Fines
In California, capacity is set at 50% if a restaurant or bar is located in a low-risk area. Restaurants and bars in high-risk areas are limited to 25% of their capacity. Unfortunately, for restaurants in LA, restaurants, and bars are now limited to take out only. In New York City, alongside occupancy restrictions, there is now also a 10 pm mandatory closure time for hot zones. In Colorado, indoor dining is being banned in several counties.
These restrictions are difficult to comply with. Restaurants and bars across the country have faced fines for their failure to comply with Covid-19 capacity requirements. In Chicago, restaurants can face fines of $10,000, and may even be ordered to close if they are found to be in violation of Covid-19 protocols. Restaurants and bars in Colorado have also faced fines closures.
Difficulty in Complying
Clearly, there is an urgent need for restaurants and bars to ensure that they are complying with Covid-19 restrictions. Existing solutions for compliance are archaic and rely on human supervision. Luckily, we live in the age of AI, which can be utilized to ensure compliance with Covid-19 safety protocols and capacity restrictions.
Slow adopters
It is, however, difficult to get the restaurant industry to embrace new technologies, as noted by the Dragontail co-founder and CEO Ido Levanon in a Forbes article on food safety and AI. An important issue here is the financial situation for most restaurants and bars. Covid-19 has negatively impacted the bottom line. With layoffs and closures, the restaurant and bar industry is struggling to stay in business. After all, money is tight.
Affordable and Privacy-focused AI
Lanthorn.ai can help restaurants and bars reopen and stay open while complying with Covid-19 capacity and mask-wearing protocols.
Our unique algorithm is trained to detect occupancy. It can also automatically detect if individuals are wearing their masks in areas where a mask is required, such as the bathroom and waiting areas. Once capacity is reached or there is unsafe practice detected, Lanthorn.ai can notify those in charge of health and safety to ensure smooth business operations.
Lanthorn.ai is a user-friendly application for restaurants as it runs on existing video cameras. It is a no-code solution that will never send or store your data on the cloud. To further privacy and security, we also blur faces as we do not want our solution to get employees in trouble.
Our current pricing model allows up to 5 cameras to run our software for FREE. This means that most restaurants and bars can cover high trafficked areas
Affordably.
Interested in deploying Lanthorn.ai? Email us at sales@lanthorn.ai
