for owner-operated restaurants & cafes.
Small changes. Same kitchen. As easy as SMS.
Not new customers. Not blanket price hikes. malai reads your POS and your invoices, finds the profit hiding in your menu, and texts you the move — the dish, the change, the dollars.
Your trusted AI partner, working 24/7. One goal: more money in your pocket.
No dashboard. No login. Just visible profit, every month — one text is the whole signup.
malai · North Indian restaurant
Monday · 8:04 AM
8:11 AM
Two weeks later
An honest question for the owner
Not sales — profit. What it costs you, what it keeps you, whether your #1 dish is actually your #1 earner. Most owners guess wrong.
No blame — you're running service, staff, suppliers, fires. Never off the clock. Profit is the point of all of it, and it's the one job that never makes it to the top of the list.
That's the job malai does. We handle the math. You handle the rest.
We read your POS and your invoices, run the analysis you never have time for, and text you the answer — the dish, the move, the dollars. The audit is free: text AUDIT to (669) 361-1140.
The 60-second version
The whole idea, in one story — starring every owner we've ever met.
What malai does
Cost drift, commission drag, hidden low-margin bestsellers. We find them and hand you the fix.
Typical lift $400–$1,800/mo
Slow movers, wrong-day over-prep, buffet portions that drifted. Prep matched to real demand.
Typical lift $300–$8,000/mo
Buried signature dishes, smarter placement, better pairings. Ticket up — no price hike needed.
Typical lift $200–$1,200/mo
Proof, before promises
A real audit, anonymized. Every line names the dish, the move, and the dollars — from your own numbers, not industry averages.
Tighten lunch buffet pars & portioningFood cost running 50% vs 33% healthy target. Reversible in one week.
+$8,212/moRaise the Lunch Combo $1The bundle underprices its own parts — every curry costs more à la carte.
+$159/moSuggest garlic naan over plainSame volume, +$0.84 gross profit per swap. Staff script included.
+$108/moDeterministic math on your POS + invoices. AI explains — it never invents a number. Every text comes with a "math" button because you should check our work.
Why not the usual options
Your POS knows what sold. It can't see your invoices, so it can't know your margin. malai marries both and tells you what to do.
Built for operators who want to be analysts. You're running a restaurant. Your phone is the interface. Nothing to learn, ever.
They tell you what already happened, months later. malai texts the move while it's still worth making — at a fraction of the cost.
"Every owner I know can quote yesterday's sales to the dollar. Almost none can quote yesterday's profit. malai exists to close that gap — one text at a time."
malai founder · based in Saratoga, CA — built by operators, fluent in Indian, Mexican, Thai, pizza, cafe & donut economics.
The Data Pledge
You share the same two things you'd hand an accountant: a sales export and recent supplier invoices. Here's exactly how they're treated — in writing, signed, one page.
Used solely to analyze your restaurant. Never shared, never resold, never used to train a model.
Customer and employee details are deleted at ingest. We keep items, quantities, prices, dates — nothing personal.
Encrypted, US-based storage. One restaurant's numbers never touch another's.
You export the files yourself, so you know exactly what malai receives. No hidden pipes into your systems.
The Found Money Guarantee
$0
A full profit audit on your real numbers — like the sample above, with your dishes on it. Yours to keep either way.
$0
Weekly profit moves by text. Each names the dish, the dollars, and the confidence level. You test what you like.
from $95/mo
Weekly moves, drift alerts when suppliers raise prices, and a monthly ledger of everything found and kept. Priced by your size — see below.
Sized by your trailing 3-month sales — confirmed from the same POS export we analyze, so there's nothing to negotiate. If you grow into a new tier, we'll congratulate you first and change the price next cycle, never retroactively.
Any month malai doesn't surface at least three times your monthly fee in opportunities, text STOP and that month is free. Every tier, same promise. Cancel anytime — by text, of course.
One text. That's the signup.
Text AUDIT and a real person — not a bot farm — replies with two questions and gets to work. First move in your hands inside a week.
Text AUDIT to (669) 361-1140