Sodexo puts AI and robots to work in kitchens and campus stores

Sodexo is expanding its use of artificial intelligence and robotics across food service and facilities operations, Fortune reported. The push matters because the company serves sites where demand can swing sharply, including schools, offices, stadiums, hospitals and airport lounges.

Alice Guéhennec, Sodexo’s chief tech, data and digital officer, oversees an annual technology budget of about 500 million euros, or $571 million, according to Fortune. She returned to Sodexo in September 2023 after earlier holding senior technology roles at the company, the Préfecture de Police in Paris and water management services company Saur.

Sodexo generates about $28 billion in annual revenue, Fortune reported. About 60% of sales come from food services, while the remaining 40% comes from facilities management.

In food service, Guéhennec has backed an internal system called Menu AI, which Sodexo says helps chefs plan menu items while factoring in ingredient prices, seasonal availability and demand at each site. Sodexo told Fortune the tool can create and manage menus from 400 seasonal recipes in one day, compared with two to four weeks of manual work previously.

Guéhennec told Fortune the tool has been rolled out to thousands of locations. She said Sodexo wants cooks spending less time on laptops and more time in kitchens.

The company is also studying how AI could draw on food trends from social media and other outside channels to help develop recipes, Guéhennec told Fortune. She said that work is still being built.

AI is also being used in Sodexo’s facilities management business, according to Fortune. Guéhennec has invested in tools that help site managers set staffing levels, decide when rooms need cleaning based on use, and make operational recommendations such as when to restock coffee at a given location.

Fortune reported that Sodexo tests major AI uses at roughly five to 10 sites in a few of the 43 countries where it operates before wider rollout. Guéhennec said local feedback helps adoption, and employees can request access to services such as Microsoft Copilot or Google Gemini Enterprise if they believe the tools will improve productivity.

Sodexo is also in the early stages of testing cashierless stores that use AI and computer vision, Fortune reported. The company has deployed the checkout-free format at two universities in St. Louis.

At one university, Sodexo says the system raised revenue by 56%, according to Fortune. At the other, unnamed school, the company reported a 28% sales increase and an 11% rise in average check size.

Robotics is another part of the company’s technology plan. Fortune reported that Sodexo has deployed about 200 robots worldwide, including 100 floor-cleaning robots across regions and 85 delivery robots, mostly in the United States.

Guéhennec told Fortune that Sodexo is looking at robots for kitchen tasks that are repetitive or less safe for workers. She said the goal would be to reduce danger and accidents in kitchens by assigning some of those jobs to machines.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.