%20(1).png)
Optiwiser was selected as one of just nine startups to present its solution at the gategroup Open Innovation Day 2026 in Zurich. At the Event Hangar of Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich, we demonstrated to gategroup executives and supply chain experts how AI-powered forecasting can make demand planning in airline catering more accurate, efficient and sustainable. Headquartered in Zurich, gategroup is one of the world's leading providers of airline catering and onboard retail services. Through its Open Innovation Day, the company actively seeks technology partners that can improve production, logistics and day-to-day decision-making.
Optiwiser Selected from 424 Startups
The selection process was highly competitive. Together with 27pilots (a Deloitte business) and its own innovation program, gatehorizon, gategroup systematically screened the startup market:
- 424 startups on the longlist
- 171 startups on the shortlist
- 40 startups invited for discussions
- 9 startups selected for the Open Innovation Day
The search focused on strategic priorities including AI-powered operations and decision support, automation and digitalization at unit level, and ESG and sustainability. Optiwiser presented in the third startup pitch session in the afternoon. Being selected from more than 400 startups to participate in this event is a significant recognition for our team.
The Challenge: Planning Demand When Every Flight Is Different
In airline catering, demand planning directly affects costs, service quality and food waste. Produce too much, and fresh meals end up being discarded. Produce too little, and products are missing on board. Additional challenges include short shelf lives, fluctuating passenger numbers, seasonal travel patterns and thousands of combinations of products, flights and airline customers. Traditional planning approaches based on Excel and historical averages quickly reach their limits in this environment. This is exactly where Optiwiser comes in.
Our Solution: AI Forecasting with Predictwiser.Cloud
In Zurich, we demonstrated how our platform, Predictwiser.Cloud, can forecast demand for gategroup and translate these predictions into actionable production and workforce plans. The solution consists of four key components.
1. More Data Than Historical Sales Alone
Our AI models do not learn exclusively from past sales data. They also incorporate additional data that influences actual demand:
- Passenger numbers per flight
- No-show rates per flight
- Passenger demographic data
- Temperature at the departure airport
- Onboard price promotions
- Public holidays and vacation periods
- Consumer trends
Passenger data is particularly important in airline catering. It transforms a forecast based purely on historical figures into a demand prediction that reflects the actual circumstances of each individual flight.
2. The Right AI Model for Every Product
Not every product follows the same demand pattern.
Some items show strong seasonal ordering patterns, others remain relatively stable, while some fluctuate seemingly at random. That is why Optiwiser does not rely on a single forecasting model. Instead, the platform automatically selects the most suitable model for each product based on its ordering patterns. These include:
- Random Forest
- Deep Neural Networks (DNN)
- K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN)
- LightGBM
- XGBoost
- Prophet
- ARIMA
3. Forecasts at the Level Where Planning Decisions Are Made
For gategroup, we proposed forecasts at precisely the levels where catering decisions are made:
- SKU × flight and SKU × customer (airline)
- Daily, weekly or monthly granularity
- Forecast horizons of up to 18 months
This allows operational day-to-day planning as well as medium- and long-term capacity planning to be based on a shared data foundation.
4. From Forecasts to Production and Workforce Plans
An accurate forecast is only the beginning. Our planning algorithm translates predicted demand into concrete production and workforce plans. It takes several operational constraints into account, including:
- Current inventory and items already in production (open production orders)
- Minimum production quantities and lead times
- Product shelf lives
- Available workforce and machine capacities
The result is delivered directly to the production team as an actionable plan rather than another spreadsheet.
Customized Interfaces and Fast Integration
Every company plans differently. That is why we develop customized user interfaces on our flexible AI infrastructure, including configurable dashboards, views and filters tailored to the needs of individual planning teams. Integration is straightforward, too: Sales data is transferred daily from the ERP system via SFTP, while forecasts are returned through an API or SFTP. This does not require a large-scale IT project.
How Much Potential Is Hidden in Your Planning?
Would you like to find out what AI forecasting could achieve for your company?
Book Your Free Potential Analysis
Measurable Results from Real-World Applications
Our projects in the food and beverage industry demonstrate that this approach delivers results in practice. In a pilot project with one of Germany's largest breweries, we achieved:
- +30% higher forecast accuracy
- −15% fewer stock-outs
- −26% less capital tied up in inventory
The Sander Group also relies on Optiwiser:
“Our partnership with Optiwiser aims to increase our forecasting accuracy and optimize our production planning.”
Frederik Honnen, Production Planner
For airline catering, this means less food waste, fewer shortages on board, lower costs and greater planning reliability for production and logistics teams.
Valuable Exchanges and New Perspectives
Beyond the startup pitches, the event offered plenty of opportunities for exchanging ideas. The program included keynotes from ABB and gategroup's X-LAB, presentations on AI-powered food waste reduction and the new economics of enterprise software, as well as in-depth conversations with gategroup representatives during the closing networking session. We would like to sincerely thank gategroup, gatehorizon and 27pilots for the invitation, the excellent organization and the insightful discussions.
Our Takeaway
The gategroup Open Innovation Day demonstrated the strong interest in AI-powered planning across the food service and airline industries. Companies that can accurately forecast demand are better positioned to produce exactly what is needed, more economically, more reliably and with significantly less food waste. We look forward to the next steps with gategroup.
Ready to Take Your Demand Planning to the Next Level?
.png){kind=icon}
