Paid pilots open for 3-5 restaurants

Wake up to the issues, numbers, and actions your restaurant needs today.

Operato sends independent restaurant owners and GMs a human-reviewed Daily Ops Brief by 9:00am, pulling together sales, labor, bookings, guest signals, and exceptions from the systems they already use.

$750 setup
$500/mo/location
Cancel after 30 days
Operational signals converging into one restaurant morning brief
Today by 9:00am
Sales -4.8%Labor 34.2%3 actions
First customer
Independent restaurants, 1-5 locations
First workflow
Daily Ops Brief with action items
First data path
Exports and read-only access
First promise
Human-reviewed, no auto-execution
Sample deliverable

A manager-ready brief, not another dashboard.

Each morning brief turns scattered restaurant exports into an action list with source evidence and a clear owner.

Harbor & Olive / Friday morning

Daily Ops Brief

3 issues need attention before dinner service
Revenue Pulse
$18.4k

Yesterday finished 4.8% below the last four Fridays.

Labor Watch
34.2%

Dinner labor is forecast above the 31% target.

Guest Signals
7 open

Unanswered messages and review replies are aging past 18 hours.

Revenue Pulse

Daily sales, trend against comparable days, refunds, voids, settlement notes, and missing export warnings.

Labor Watch

Scheduled hours, labor-to-sales risk, late clock-ins, open shifts, overtime flags, and coverage pressure.

Reservations & Service

Cover count, no-show risk, large parties, waitlist issues, special notes, and service bottlenecks.

Guest Signals

Reviews, unanswered messages, complaint follow-ups, recurring feedback themes, and reputation risks.

Exceptions

Stale data, failed exports, unusual refunds, missing schedules, and anything a manager should not miss.

Recommended Actions

Issue, evidence, recommended action, owner, urgency, and source for each action item.

Recommended actions
Dinner labor is forecast 3.2 points above target.

Schedule export shows 112 planned hours against expected Friday sales of $18.7k.

high
Action: Review the 5:00-8:00pm overlap and decide whether one support shift should start later.
Owner: GM
Source: 7shifts export + Toast sales export
Two large parties are booked within 20 minutes of each other.

Reservation export shows parties of 9 and 12 at 7:10pm and 7:30pm with patio preference.

medium
Action: Confirm table plan and assign one manager to guest arrival flow before service.
Owner: Floor lead
Source: OpenTable export
A service complaint is still unanswered after 18 hours.

Google review mentions slow entrees and no manager follow-up; no owner response is visible.

medium
Action: Draft a public reply and assign a private follow-up call before lunch.
Owner: Owner
Source: Google Business Profile review export
Concierge MVP workflow

Start with exports, prove value, then replace the manual steps with connectors.

01

Collect

POS, labor, bookings, reviews, and messages arrive as exports or read-only access.

02

Normalize

Rows are mapped to tenants, locations, source systems, metrics, brief items, and action tasks.

03

Review

Operato drafts the morning brief, then a human checks every number and claim before sending.

04

Send

The GM receives a 9:00am brief with evidence, owners, urgency, and recommended next steps.

POS and payments

Toast, Square, Lightspeed, Stripe, or processor exports for sales, refunds, voids, and settlements.

Labor and schedules

7shifts, Homebase, Deputy, payroll exports, and manual shift notes for coverage and labor risk.

Guest demand

OpenTable, Resy, SevenRooms, waitlist exports, reviews, and messages for service and reputation signals.

Trust boundaries

Useful from day one, careful by design.

V1 is intentionally narrow: Operato reads, summarizes, flags, and recommends. It does not move money, edit payroll, publish customer-facing content, or change live systems.

Human-reviewed before send

Briefs can be drafted with software assistance, but a human reviewer checks every customer-facing brief before delivery.

Exports and read-only access first

V1 avoids risky credential storage and official connector delays by using customer-provided exports or read-only user accounts.

No automatic execution

Operato does not process refunds, change payroll, edit menus, publish campaigns, or reply to customers during the pilot.

Evidence on every action

Every action item names the source system or export so operators can trust where the recommendation came from.

30-day paid pilot

A launch plan built around selling, onboarding, and proving value fast.

3 paid pilots

Target outcome by day 30: three restaurants signed, two renewals likely, and one case-study candidate.

Days 1-4

Package and publish

Finalize the offer, pilot terms, lead form, proof brief, and outreach list around one restaurant wedge.

Days 5-14

Sell first pilots

Run direct outreach to 50 restaurants, book discovery calls, and close three paid pilots.

Days 10-21

Onboard and deliver

Collect exports, configure preferences, and send the first brief within 48 hours of complete onboarding.

Days 15-30

Prove value

Track useful actions, corrections, time saved, renewals, and testimonial-ready outcomes.

After day 30

Automate what repeats

Replace repeated manual imports with connectors only after the paid workflow proves durable.

Capacity cap

Stop at five

Keep the concierge pilot capped at five restaurants until quality and repeatability are clear.

Why this wedge

Restaurants already have the tools. Operators still do the stitching.

84%

of new restaurants selected cloud POS in 2022

Toast 2023 Outlook

69%

of restaurants used multiple technology vendors

Toast / Restaurant Dive

27%

were unsatisfied with current integrations or APIs

Restaurant tech outlook

36 / 58

average apps deployed by small businesses / SMBs

Okta SMBs at Work

Apply for pilot

Get your first Daily Ops Brief within 48 hours of complete onboarding.

Best fit today: independent restaurants with 1-5 locations, active POS data, a labor or scheduling system, and a GM or owner who checks numbers every morning.

Pilot success criteria
The brief saves the owner or GM at least 2 hours per week.
The brief catches at least 2 useful issues per month before they become expensive.
At least 3 action items per week are marked useful by the operator.
The first brief is delivered within 48 hours of receiving complete onboarding data.
Pilot application

Opens email to hello@operato.ai

Limited to first 5 restaurants
Pilot terms

Plain terms for the first paid customers.

Price

$750 setup plus $500 per month per location for the 30-day pilot.

Included

Onboarding call, data intake checklist, weekday Daily Ops Brief, weekly summary, and renewal review.

Data access

Restaurant provides exports or creates read-only accounts. Operato does not collect raw passwords.

Cancellation

Cancel after the first 30 days. No long-term contract is required for the pilot.

Not included

No automatic refunds, payroll edits, menu updates, campaign publishing, or customer replies in v1.

Pilot cap

The first cohort is limited to five restaurants so every brief can be reviewed carefully.

Privacy posture

No credential collection in v1.

Operato's first pilot uses exports and customer-created read-only access. We do not ask restaurants to share raw passwords, and we do not execute changes inside POS, payroll, payment, reservation, marketing, or customer-facing systems. Uploaded exports are used only to prepare the agreed pilot brief and should be removed at the end of the pilot if the restaurant does not continue.