Point of sale (POS) platform Pilot, part of Johannesburg-based payments and fintech firm Paycorp Group, has launched an AI-driven intelligence layer called Navigator as competition within the hospitality industry grows.
According to Pilot, Navigator can identify sales trends, compare supplier pricing, flag purchasing anomalies and show which menu items are becoming less profitable as costs change.
Glenn Miller, MD at Pilot, says: “Competition is developing quickly. Yoco recently acquired Dyner, an AI-powered restaurant operations platform, while established POS providers such as GAAP/Lesaka, Lightspeed and Micros offer varying levels of reporting, analytics and operational tools.”
Access to real-time data and analysis on sales trends and supplier pricing is critical for hospitality operators, as are technology solutions designed to flag purchasing anomalies and identify which menu items are becoming less profitable as costs change.
Miller adds that business leaders in hospitality must be able to ask questions such as where margins are being lost, which menu items are performing, whether supplier prices have changed and where unusual activity may require attention.
“Restaurant operators don't need more reports. They need to know what requires their attention every day, and what they can do about it,” he says.
That need is sharpened by pressure on the sector. Miller cites Statistics South Africa’s June 2026 Food and Beverage Survey, which found that real income at restaurants and coffee shops fell 2.3% quarter on quarter, the largest drag on the industry’s overall performance, despite modest year-on-year growth.
Tempered AI adoption
The hospitality industry has generally adopted a tempered approach to AI, according to Pilot, with adoption slower than in sectors such as financial services and large-scale retail.
“These industries typically have greater investment capacity, more established data infrastructure and dedicated technology teams," says Miller. "Hospitality, by contrast, is dominated by independent businesses and smaller groups operating on tight margins, with limited time and in-house technical capacity.
“This does not mean there is less opportunity. Restaurants generate large volumes of valuable sales, purchasing and operational data every day, but much of it has historically remained underused. The opportunity for AI in hospitality is to turn that existing data into practical, timely actions, such as identifying cost increases, protecting margins, reducing waste and highlighting unusual activity.”
Navigator is the first major product under Pilot’s refreshed positioning as a hospitality control centre – an operational model the company describes as helping hospitality organisations win business within the broader tourism sector.
Miller says Navigator stands out because it is built directly into the Pilot environment and analyses each customer’s own sales, purchasing and operational data.
The company says the objective is not to turn business owners into data analysts, but to make useful analysis part of how they already manage their businesses.
Turning data into action
Johan Steyn, AI expert and founder of AIforBusiness.net, says Pilot's approach is well aligned with where value in hospitality technology now sits.
"Analysing a merchant's own sales, purchasing and operational data is exactly where value in hospitality technology now sits, and building it natively into the platform is a genuine advantage – it means cleaner first-party data and far less integration friction," he says.
Steyn says the opportunity for Pilot lies in the depth of that advantage. "The entire South African market is moving towards the same 'payments plus an AI operations layer' model, so being embedded and using a customer's own data is fast becoming an industry baseline.
"What will genuinely set a platform apart is the depth and local relevance of its data, the size of the merchant base feeding its models, and whether it converts insight into action for the operator."
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