Alain.AI | Le Pain Quotidien uses AI to create ‘digital twin’ of chef-founder Alain Coumont
Le Pain Quotidien Alain Coumont met Alain.AI
Le Pain Quotidien has announced Alain.AI, a tool that turns the brain of founder and creative director Alain Coumont into artificial intelligence. Alain Coumont is the first founder worldwide with a digital twin that imitates his knowledge and creativity to propose new recipes. The bakery and restaurant chain have been working closely with digital partner November Five for years. They are now further committed to rolling out various customer experience-oriented innovations around the world.
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Alain.AI is the first ‘digital twin’ of an entrepreneur in the culinary world
The tool can develop new recipes that are based on the brand’s culinary traditions, but the recipes can also be localized or adapted to dietary preferences. Thanks to the ‘copy’ of Alain Coumont’s brain, the recipes remain true to the known flavors of Le Pain Quotidien. But it also goes beyond the branches worldwide: In the near future, the most loyal customers of the Tartine Club program will also have access to Alain.AI to recreate Le Pain Quotidien recipes at home.
Alain Coumont, Chief Creative Officer of Le Pain Quotidien: “With Alain.AI we combine tradition with cutting-edge technology to keep our offers fresh and exciting for our customers, now and for years to come.”
From inventory to ‘Chat GPT’ for recipes
The system consists of an extensive inventory of 10,000 recipes from Le Pain Quotidien, and it can interpret various languages, units of measurement (imperial/metric) and local kitchen equipment. In addition, Alain.AI shows the presentation of the dishes and the program writes the training manuals and manuals for the kitchen staff.
This way, the chain manages to prepare and present a sandwich in exactly the same way in Leuven and New York. A total of 214 locations in 19 countries can localize recipes to the taste of the country, without losing the distinctive flavors and style of Le Pain Quotidien. In addition, Alain.AI is expanded with three important tools, namely:
- Menu Maker: Creates seasonal menus from the recipe catalog, complete with ingredient lists for sourcing and detailed step-by-step preparation guides.
- Experimental Cuisine: develops and experiments with new, not yet published or completed recipes.
- Recipe creation tool: Generates – using existing catalog data or from scratch – new recipes using ChatGPT-like instructions. In the long term, the intention is to integrate consumer research data to make even better predictions. If consumer data shows that Le Pain Quotidien customers like to eat hummus on their sandwiches, the recipe generator also adds this more often.
Synthetic market research, also digital twin of customers on the way
The customer also receives a digital copy of himself in Alain.AI because the consumer research data is integrated. This way, Alain.AI can provide immediate insights into the possible responses by consumers to new ideas, and effectively create a ‘digital twin’ of the loyal customer.
This way, Le Pain Quotidien’s marketing team can conduct synthetic market research for certain interventions in the range. For example, one can investigate how customers will respond to price changes or new recipes. Le Pain Quotidien and November Five will do this with: integration of external trends and trend forecasts; implementation of local sales forecasts and execution of consumer research using virtual personas.
Website: Alain.AI
