Now onboarding founding branchesUAE · 2026

Every floor, seen every second.

Cortex Floor turns the cameras already on your ceiling into a live operations system. Every table, counter and queue timed, every guest noticed, the right person pinged before anyone waits too long. Restaurants first. Any floor with a camera next.

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No new hardware · Works with RTSP / ONVIF IP cameras · Arabic and English
LIVE · DINING HALL 00:00:00 8 ZONES TRACKED
Right nowsample venue
CF
Omar · Section Anow
Table 3 · seated 5 minutes, no waiter yet
1 sTable timers update every second
5 minDefault "no waiter yet" alert, set per venue
0New cameras needed in most dining rooms
1Dashboard for every branch you run
The problem

Slow service is a silent revenue leak.

Guests rarely complain. They just don't come back, and the restaurant never finds out which table it lost them at.

87%

of diners said they would not return to a pub or restaurant after slow service from staff.

HospitalityGEM poll, UK, 2015 · Restaurant Online
48%

would tell the venue about slow service. The rest leave without a word, so the owner never sees the problem.

HospitalityGEM, 775 diners, UK, 2015 · Morning Advertiser
1 in 3

diners say they have walked out of a restaurant because of long waits. 27% say long waits would stop a repeat visit.

Lightspeed survey, 1,000 US consumers, 2025 · Lightspeed
62%

of UAE dine-in diners do not want to wait more than 10 minutes for their order.

Oracle food and beverage study, 2022 · Gulf News
~7%

of guests drive up to 50% of order volume. Regulars dine about 52% more often, and 77% tip more where they are regulars.

Toast and Resy Regulars report, 2026 · Toast
5–9%

more revenue from one extra star on Yelp. Service is what earns or loses that star.

Michael Luca, Harvard Business School, 2011 · Harvard Magazine
What it costs you

Put your numbers in. See the leak.

A simple model built on two published rates: how often guests have a very poor experience, and how many of them then cut or stop spending. Change any input.

Defaults: 14% of experiences are very negative and 51% of those lead to reduced or stopped spending, across industries (Qualtrics XM Institute, 2024). Labour share is the US full-service median of 36.5% of sales (National Restaurant Association, 2025). Guest and spend figures are yours.

Revenue exposed each year
AED 0
Annual revenue0
Guests with a very poor experience / year0
Of them, cut or stop spending0
Revenue exposed per branch / month0
Labour bill at 36.5% of sales0
Every 1% of labour saved is worth0
Cortex Floor Growth plan, all branches / year0

Revenue exposed = annual revenue × poor experience rate × share who cut or stop. It is the spend tied to guests at risk, not a forecast of what Cortex Floor recovers.

Stop the leak, join early access
Any floor with a camera

Dining hall. Garden. Upper floor. Counter. Pickup shelf.

One engine, different zone types. A restaurant runs every area under one branch. A cake shop or flower shop runs its counter, queue and display with the same rules.

Garden terrace from the ceiling camera

Restaurant · 3 cameras

Dining hall, garden terrace and upper lounge, 21 zones, three sections, one dashboard.

tablesbarqueue at door
Cake shop from the ceiling camera

Cake shop

Till, queue, display case and café tables. Alerts when three people wait, when the case runs low, when a café table sits uncleared.

counterqueuedisplay
Flower shop from the ceiling camera

Flower shop

Counter, workbench, flower wall, pickup shelf and entrance. Nobody waits unattended, no bouquet sits uncollected past its time.

counterpickupstock

Pharmacies, clinics, showrooms, gyms and salons use the same zone types. If a camera can see it, Cortex Floor can run it.

Your team

Workload you can see. Dignity you can keep.

Staff burn out quietly, the same way guests leave quietly. Cortex Floor shows who is overloaded and who has not had a break, without pointing a camera at anyone's face.

Section load, live

How many of each person's zones are busy right now, visits this shift, and average response time.

Omar · 5 of 7 zones busyLayla · 3 of 7 zones busy

Break reminders

Over three hours without a break and the manager gets a nudge before the next rush, not a complaint after it.

Karim · 3h 30m since last break. Suggest one before 8 pm.

One-tap shift check-in

Staff answer "How's the shift?" themselves: good, okay or tough. Managers see the team pulse. Nobody is scored by a camera.

No faces. No emotion scoring. By design.

The camera counts people and recognises uniforms. Identity comes from the shift roster and the app login. This keeps Cortex Floor clear of biometric rules in the UAE and the EU (where emotion recognition on employees is banned), and it is the only version of staff analytics a team will accept.

What it is worth

Top-of-the-line service, every table, every night.

Service is the thing guests remember and the thing they write about. Here is the chain from a faster floor to money, with the evidence behind each link.

01 · SERVICE

Nobody waits unnoticed

Every table, counter and queue is timed. Water, bread and plates are seen before anyone asks. Staff get the task, not the guest's complaint.

87% of diners said they would not return after slow service (HospitalityGEM, 2015).

02 · REVIEWS

Better Google reviews

Service is the number one reason people write a bad review. Fix service and the rating follows.

51% name service as the top reason for a bad review (GatherUp). One extra star is worth 5 to 9% more revenue (Harvard). A half-star rise makes a restaurant 30 to 49% more likely to sell out peak seats (Berkeley via ReviewTrackers).

03 · RETURNING GUESTS

Regulars are the business

A small group of regulars carries the revenue. Every regular you keep is worth many first visits.

About 7% of guests drive up to 50% of order volume; regulars dine 52% more often and 77% tip more where they are regulars (Toast and Resy, 2026). A 5% rise in retention lifts profit 25 to 95% across industries (HBR citing Bain).

Your investment against the upside
Growth plan, one branch, per yearAED 18,000
Branch doing 250 guests a day at AED 120, revenue per yearAED 10,950,000
What one percent of that revenue is worthAED 109,500
Covers the subscription6×

The one percent is the smallest effect the review studies above describe for a single star. We do not promise a star; we measure your return rate, your response times and your rating before and after the pilot, and show you the number. In customer satisfaction, the payback is long and compounding: the guest you keep tonight is the regular who fills a table every week next year.

Start with a founding branch
The product

Store operations, on autopilot.

Like the platforms you already subscribe to for orders and delivery, but for what happens on your floor.

Live table intelligence

Each table becomes a zone. The system knows if it is free, seated, waiting to be cleaned or reserved, and how long it has been that way.

Ceiling camera view of a dining room with table zones

Down to the bread basket

The camera reads the table itself: water running low, bread basket empty, plates waiting to be cleared, menus still open, a hand in the air. The waiter knows before the guest asks.

Water almost emptyBread basket emptyPlates to clearGuest wants attention

No forgotten customer

Waiters get a push with a snapshot of the table the moment service slips.

T3Seated 5 min, no waiternow
T6Released, to be cleaned1m
T5Bill stage, offer the bill3m

The next free table

Hosts see which table frees first and quote real wait times.

M5~4 min

Peak times, staffed right

Occupancy by hour tells you how many waiters each shift needs.

Every branch, one screen

Compare turn times and alert response across locations.

Jumeirah82%
Marina64%
Downtown91%
Sample branches
How it works

Live in days, not months.

Get in touch and we build it with you. Our team handles setup end to end.

STEP 01 · CONNECT

Plug into your cameras

We connect to the IP cameras already covering your dining room. If a blind spot needs a camera, we tell you which one.

STEP 02 · CALIBRATE

Draw your floor

Every table is mapped as a zone, matched to your sections and waiters, and your alert rules are set to your service standard.

STEP 03 · GO LIVE

Run the floor

Managers get the live dashboard, waiters get the app, owners get the numbers. We train your team in Arabic and English.

Pricing

One subscription per branch.

Monthly, per location. Install from AED 6,000 for two AI cameras if you start from zero; if your cameras already work with us, we quote the setup after a check. Founding branches lock their price for a year.

Early access

Founding branch

AED 1,000
per branch / month, locked 12 months

For the first restaurants that build it with us.

  • Live dashboard and table timers
  • Waiter app for every staff member
  • Queue and next free table
  • Setup and staff training included
  • Direct line to the product team
Join early access

Growth

AED 1,500
per branch / month, up to 3 cameras

For single venues and small groups.

  • Everything in Founding
  • Peak time and staffing insights
  • Up to 3 camera views per branch
  • Email and WhatsApp support
Get in touch

Group

AED 1,200
per branch / month, 5+ branches, 20% off

For chains and hospitality groups.

  • Multi-branch command view
  • Custom alert rules per brand
  • POS and reservation integrations
  • Dedicated success manager
Talk to us

How we quote

We cannot give a fixed quote before we know what cameras and system you run today, because that decides how much we install and how much we simply connect. The general picture:

  • Your cameras already work with us (IP cameras with an NVR): the subscription plus a setup fee for the edge box, calibration and training, quoted after we check the system.
  • You need AI cameras installed: AED 6,000 for two cameras from zero (cameras, NVR, cabling, SIRA-approved install, calibration, training), rising with the number of cameras and the detections you want (tables, queue, counter, pickup, stock).
  • Multiple branches: 20% off the subscription from five branches, one dashboard across all of them.
  • POS and iPad integration (add-on): the moment a table frees up or a queue builds, the alert lands on the system your staff already hold, Foodics, Grubtech or an iPad.
  • Guest waitlist by QR (add-on): a code at the door that shows waiting guests their table and live wait time.

Beyond the floor

Cortex builds the rest of your digital operation from the same place: ordering websites and apps, loyalty and WhatsApp automations, back-office dashboards, AI agents for your team. Bring any idea; we design the AI system around how your business already works.

websites & appsPOS integrationsAI agentsdashboards
Tell us what you want built
From the Cortex blog

Which cameras work with Cortex Floor, and what to do if yours don't.

Before we quote, we look at what is already on your ceiling. Here is what we find most often in UAE venues and what each one means for your install.

1. IP cameras with an NVR

Hikvision, Dahua, Uniview, Axis. The most common setup in restaurants and shops. These cameras speak ONVIF or RTSP, so our edge box pulls the stream straight from the NVR. No new cameras unless a table sits in a blind spot. Best case: subscription plus a setup quoted after the check.

2. Analog cameras with a DVR

Older coaxial systems. The picture is usually too low and the DVR does not share a clean stream. We either add an encoder on the DVR output or replace the two or three cameras that cover your floor with AI cameras. Usually the AED 6,000 install route.

3. Consumer cloud cameras

Ring, TP-Link Tapo, Eufy, Arlo. Good for a glance from your phone, locked to the maker's cloud, and often Wi-Fi only. Most cannot give us a stream, so we install wired AI cameras for the zones that matter. Install route.

4. Cloud video platforms

Verkada, Eagle Eye, Solink. Enterprise systems with APIs. We connect through the platform where the API allows it, otherwise we add our own camera for the floor. Case by case, quoted after a call.

What we need from you before we install

The length and width of the area in metres, the ceiling height, how many tables or stations you serve, and a photo from each of the four corners of the room plus one of your existing camera. Measure with a tape or the iPhone Measure app; a tape is better. If you send a rough photo instead, we estimate the dimensions with AI and confirm them with you before anything is ordered. From that we design your floor in the system to the exact area, so when the cameras go live your real tables and real guests appear in their real places. Quiet areas install faster than busy ones, so days on site depend on your venue.

For investors

A fast-growing market with no eyes on the floor.

Restaurants run on POS, delivery and reservation software. Almost nothing measures what happens between the door and the bill. That gap is our wedge.

$27.3B

UAE foodservice market in 2026, projected to reach $61.2B by 2031 (17.55% CAGR).

Mordor Intelligence · report
26,000

food establishments operating in Dubai alone, with 1,500 new openings in the first five months of 2024.

Dubai Municipality, via Gulf News, 2024
25.4%

CAGR for computer vision AI in retail, from about $1.7B in 2024 to about $12.6B by 2033.

Grand View Research · report
$170M

raised by Foodics in its 2022 Series C. Dubai's Grubtech raised $13M (2021) and $15M (2024). Capital backs GCC restaurant tech.

Orrick · Wamda

Why Cortex Floor wins

  • No hardware sale. It runs on cameras restaurants already own, so a branch goes live in days and the margin stays software-grade.
  • Recurring revenue per branch. One subscription per location, with setup on top. Groups expand branch by branch.
  • Built where the market is growing. UAE-first, Arabic and English, priced for the GCC.
  • Proven category. Investors already back computer vision for restaurants: Agot AI raised $12M, with Yum! Brands among its investors (Hospitality Tech).
  • Founder-market fit. Built by a commercial leader who has launched and grown over 1,000 online businesses across industries.

What a pilot measures

Each founding branch is a case study with numbers we track from day one:

  • Time from seating to first waiter visit
  • Time a released table waits to be cleaned
  • Table turns per service and queue walk-aways
  • Google rating before and after

For reference, one vendor case study reports waiter response cut from over 5 minutes to under 2, and cleanup from 15 minutes to under 5, after adding camera analytics (Sciforce). That is one vendor's own claim, not independent proof.

Talk to the founders
With our partner Elite Plus

A mascot that talks for your brand.

With Elite Plus, licensed in Abu Dhabi to operate AI robotics, we build a physical mascot of your brand with a voice agent inside it. Put it outside your branch. It greets, answers and sells, in whatever language and dialect you choose.

Knows everything you sell

Your full menu, prices, items, allergens, opening hours and offers. Ask it anything a host would be asked and it answers like one.

Any language, any dialect

Emirati, Levantine, Egyptian, Hindi, Tagalog, English and more. It switches to the guest's language mid-sentence and sounds human, not robotic.

Built as your character

Designed as a mascot of your brand, not a generic robot. It stands at the door, draws people in, and hands them to your team or to the live waitlist.

Interested?

Tell us about your brand and we design the mascot, the voice and the knowledge base around it.

Contact us052 422 2194Get in touch
How we studied this

Five research agents. Forty-plus sources.

Before writing a single price, we sent AI research agents across the market: hardware costs, installation labour, AI inference pricing, every competitor we could find, review economics and market size. Every number on this page links to where it came from.

Operations & wait timesCustomer experience & retentionMarket size & fundingHardware, install & AI costsCompetitors & review economics
AED 6504MP AI camera with optical zoom, installed by our partnerCortex and Elite Plus install pricing, 2026
AED 350Installation labour per indoor camera, including cabling and trunkingCortex and Elite Plus install pricing, 2026
≈ $100AI reads per camera per month, 14 hours a day on Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite, measured on our pilot setupList pricing: Google AI, 2026
77%median SaaS gross margin, the bar we price againstBenchmarkit via CloudZero, 2025
The investment plan

$1M to put eyes on 500 floors.

Install and hardware prices come from our installation partner Elite Plus. The allocation, subscription prices and targets are ours and will be refined with the first pilots.

What one branch costs to put live

ItemFound priceSource
AI camera, 4MP with optical zoomAED 650 eachCortex and Elite Plus install pricing
8-channel PoE NVRAED 1,020Cortex and Elite Plus install pricing
Edge box (Raspberry Pi 5 16GB class)Per requirementSized to the number of cameras and detections
Install labour, per indoor camera (cabling, trunking, mounting)AED 350Cortex and Elite Plus install pricing
Reference: full camera system installed in a Dubai venue≈ AED 7,000Cables, trunking and labour included; days on site depend on the area and whether it is in service
AI reads, 14 hours a day per camera on Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite≈ $100 / camera / monthMeasured on our pilot setup; list pricing at Google AI

Where a venue already has usable cameras, the install shrinks to the edge box, calibration and training; we confirm that after seeing the current system. Commercial CCTV work in Dubai must be done by a SIRA-approved company, which our partner is. Quiet areas install faster than busy ones, so the days on site, and the labour, move with the venue.

Proposed pricing and margin per branch

PlanPer branch / monthIncludes
Founding (first 20 branches)AED 1,000Training and onboarding included, locked 12 months
GrowthAED 1,500Up to 3 cameras, insights, staff app
Group (5+ branches)AED 1,200Growth per branch with a 20% group discount, one dashboard across branches
Setup, two AI cameras from zeroAED 6,000Cameras, NVR, cabling, SIRA-approved install, calibration, training
Setup, existing camerasQuoted after checkDepends on the camera system in place
AI cost at Growth, 3 cameras (≈ AED 1,000 a month)67%
Gross margin before support, vs 77% SaaS median≈ 33%

Our prices. AI cost is the biggest lever: reading one frame every 20 seconds instead of every 10 halves it, and the pilot will set the rate that still catches every event. Comparable: BrixLens charges $150 per location per month for kitchen camera analytics (Wharton write-up, 2026). AED figures use the USD peg of 3.6725.

Use of funds · $1M (proposed)

Camera and edge hardware stock, bought in bulk for 500 branches$300K
Installation team: SIRA-approved technicians and calibration crew$200K
Product and engineering: vision pipeline, apps, integrations$250K
Sales, onboarding and training, Arabic and English$150K
Legal, licences, working capital$100K

Target: 500 branches live in 24 months. At AED 1,500 per branch that is AED 9M (about $2.45M) in annual recurring revenue at full deployment, plus setup revenue of AED 6,000 per two-camera install. Targets are ours and depend on pilot results.

What the restaurant gets back

EvidenceFigureSource
Revenue change per extra star on Yelp+5 – 9%Luca, Harvard, 2011
Half-star rise: more likely to sell out peak seats+30 – 49%Berkeley via ReviewTrackers
Top reason for a bad review is service51%GatherUp, 2018
Won't eat somewhere without checking reviews first46%Chatmeter, 2025
Won't consider a business under 3 stars87%BrightLocal, 2023
Vendor-reported: waiter response 5+ min to under 2, Google rating 4.5 to 4.7claimSciforce case study
Vendor-reported: revenue uplift from faster table turns5 – 10%DifiNative TableWatch, Intel, 2025

Worked example: a branch doing 250 guests a day at AED 120 turns over about AED 10.95M a year. One percent of that is AED 109,500, against a Growth subscription of AED 18,000 a year. The calculator above uses your own numbers.

Competitors we found

WhoWhat they doDine-in table statusRegionPublic pricing
Cortex FloorExisting CCTV, table and zone timers, staff alerts with snapshot, next free table, staffing, team workload, multi-verticalYesUAE, GCCPer branch, published
DifiNative TableWatchIntel edge reference design for occupancy and table timersYesEMEA, APAC, IndiaNone
Shire Intelligence"AI floor manager" on CCTV, YC seed $125K, Sep 2026YesUSNone
SciforceCustom build for one chain, not a productYesCustomNone
EyeGoOccupancy, people counting, hygienePartialDubai, KSANone
SolinkSecurity, POS fraud, compliance on existing camerasPartialGlobalNone
Presto VisionLobby and wait analytics, launched 2019; parent delisted and wound up in 2024PartialUSNone
Wobot, Agot, PreciTasteKitchen hygiene, order accuracy, prep forecastingNoIndia, USNone

Sources: Embedded Computing · Dealroom · Crunchbase · Presto · Restaurant Dive · Wobot. No vendor we found publishes pricing, and none is shown selling dine-in table status in the UAE.

Get in touch

Tell us about your floor. We build it.

We set up Cortex Floor for your branches, calibrate every table and train your team. Message us directly or leave your details and we come to you.

Contact us052 422 2194
Message on WhatsApp →
Early access sign up

Three minutes. We use this to check your cameras and quote you properly.

The area we will cover

Measure with a tape or the iPhone Measure app. Rough numbers are fine; we confirm from your photos.

Photos are sent to us on WhatsApp after you submit; we never upload them here.
We reply within one working day with next steps and a quote.