Case Study · AI Automation · Retail & Operations
AI-Powered Inventory Management Automation Case Study
One Inventory System for 30+ Training Centers: Bringing Order to Food & Beverage Stock Across a Multi-Location Sports Brand
The result: month-end F&B reporting went from several days of spreadsheet consolidation to a self-serve dashboard, with product data standardized across every one of 30+ centers and expired stock visible by location and category.
Several days
Month-end F&B reporting meant several days of spreadsheet consolidation.
Self-serve dashboard
Product data is standardized across every center, and expired stock is now visible by location and category.
The Customer
A fast-growing, multi-location sports brand
A fast-growing sports training and entertainment company that runs more than 30 indoor centers across North America and the UK. The centers are a mix of company-owned and franchised sites, grouped into regions. Each one runs a small food and beverage (F&B) operation: drinks, snacks, sports nutrition and frozen treats sold to players, parents and visitors.
At a glance
- Customer
- Sports training and entertainment company
- Network
- 30+ indoor centers across North America and the UK
- Sites
- Company-owned and franchised, grouped into regions
- Scope
- Food and beverage (F&B) stock: drinks, snacks, sports nutrition, frozen treats
- Solution
- Purpose-built F&B Inventory app with a live executive dashboard
The Problem
Monthly counts arrived in every format imaginable
Every month, each center had to count its F&B stock and report what it had on hand, what it had received and what had expired. The counts came in through spreadsheets and emails, in different formats, product names and cost prices from one center to the next.
The finance and operations teams spent days at each month-end chasing missing counts, fixing product names by hand and rebuilding the totals. Even then, leadership had no reliable answer to simple questions:
- What is our F&B inventory worth right now, at cost and at retail?
- Which centers are writing off the most expired stock?
- How is inventory value trending month over month, and in which categories?
Challenges Faced Building the AI Inventory Automation
No single product list.
The same item showed up under different names at different centers, so roll-ups needed manual cleanup and cost values were inconsistent.
Many locations, many roles.
Front-line staff needed a simple screen for their own center only. Regional and head-office admins needed to see and manage every center.
The center list kept changing.
Centers opened, closed or became franchises during the year. The tool had to stay in sync with the company's main system of record instead of being kept up to date by hand.
Historical numbers could be changed.
In shared spreadsheets, last month's figures could be edited after the fact, which undermined month-end reporting.
Repetitive data entry.
Most centers carry the same products every month, but staff had to re-enter the full list each time.
Low tolerance for training.
The tool had to work for part-time staff with almost no onboarding.
The AI Automation Solution
One F&B Inventory app, from count to dashboard
We designed and built a purpose-built F&B Inventory app that does two things simply: admins decide which products each center needs to track, and each center fills in its inventory count every month. A live dashboard on top rolls everything up for leadership.
Admin-controlled product lists per center.
Admins maintain one central catalog with category, cost and retail price, and assign products to each center, so every location only counts the items it actually stocks. New products can be added one at a time or in bulk through a CSV template.
Monthly count entry built for staff.
Staff sign in and see only their center. They enter On Hand, Received and Expired, the app calculates Total automatically, and notes capture context such as damaged stock or freezer issues. Changes save automatically.
“Import from last month.”
One click carries last month's product list forward, so staff only need to update the numbers.
Locked history.
Past months automatically become read-only, so reported figures can't be changed after month-end.
Centers synced from the source system.
Locations and regions come straight from the company's operational system. Admins can only show or hide a center, which keeps the reference data clean.
Executive dashboard.
Total cost value, total retail value, line-item counts, a 6-month trend and value by category, filterable by month and region. Leadership can check inventory health without asking anyone for a spreadsheet.
Built-in feedback loop.
Staff can submit bug reports and feature requests from inside the app, and admins triage them in one place.
See the AI Automation in Action
1. Executive dashboard.
The admin home screen. Three KPI tiles show total inventory cost value, retail value and line-item count for the selected month, with the change from last month. The 6-month trend chart tracks cost and retail value over time. The category panel shows where inventory value sits, and an alert flags centers that haven't submitted their monthly count yet. The data can be filtered by region, month and year.
2. Monthly inventory entry (staff view).
What a front-line staff member sees: their own center's stock sheet for the month. They enter On Hand, Received and Expired for each product, and the highlighted Total column updates automatically. Notes record context such as damaged or expired items. Changes save automatically, and running cost and retail totals for the month appear at the bottom.
3. Central product catalog (admin).
The single source of truth for every F&B product. Admins set the category, retail price and cost price, and choose which centers carry each item. Products can be added one at a time or uploaded in bulk using the downloadable CSV template. Discontinued items can be marked inactive without losing their history.
4. Centers, synced from the system of record.
The list of locations and their regions is pulled automatically from the company's operational system, so nobody has to maintain it by hand. Admins can see each center's submission status for the current month at a glance and hide centers that have closed.
5. Adding products to a center's monthly count.
When a center starts a new month, staff can either import last month's list in one click or pick products from the central catalog with a searchable multi-select. Because staff choose from the catalog instead of typing names, product data stays consistent across every location.
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