The AI agent Klara is used in all Pincho Nation restaurants. The agent saves restaurant managers around 30 minutes per day, which adds up to approximately 125 hours saved daily across the entire chain. Illustration: Michel Skånvad / Pincho Nation
The restaurant industry has faced declining demand and rising costs in recent years. In a challenging market environment, companies are looking for ways to improve efficiency and free up employees’ time for core tasks. At Pincho Nation, AI has become part of the solution, helping automate reporting and support business management.
An AI agent called Klara automatically compiles the restaurants’ morning reports, reducing manual work and freeing up time for other responsibilities. Every morning, the agent sends restaurant managers a report analyzing the previous day’s performance. On Mondays, it delivers a summary of the entire previous week, highlighting key insights and prioritized actions.
According to Pincho Nation Finland, Klara saves each restaurant manager approximately 30 minutes per day, or 2.5 hours per week. The AI agent is used in all 85 restaurants in the chain as well as in support functions. Around 250 employees use the system, resulting in an estimated daily time saving of approximately 125 hours across the organization.
With information flowing automatically, managers can devote more time to staff leadership, improving the customer experience, and monitoring business performance. Klara’s morning report includes sales figures, customer satisfaction metrics, and customer traffic data. Previously, managers had to manually gather the same information from multiple systems and perform the analysis themselves.
“I have never really been a technology enthusiast, and I hardly use AI in my personal life. Still, Klara’s report is the first thing I open every morning. It quickly tells me where we stand and frees up time for what really matters in this industry: meeting people,” says Karoliina Saarikoski, Restaurant Manager at Pincho Nation Helsinki, in the company’s press release.
The role of AI in everyday business operations has expanded rapidly. In recent years, it has been widely used in marketing, customer service, and content creation. Today, it can also be applied to automating administrative tasks. AI agents can collect data from different systems, analyze it, and generate ready-made reports to support decision-making.
Pincho Nation’s example reflects a broader trend in which AI is increasingly being used to automate routine tasks. Similar solutions could also be applied in other industries where employees spend significant time collecting and monitoring data. Automation can free up time for core responsibilities and higher-value work. However, Ronnie Persson, Pincho Nation’s Director of Technology and AI Development, believes that this level of AI-agent adoption is still relatively rare in the Nordic countries.
Klara Was Developed In-House
The Klara agent was developed in Sweden and introduced in Helsinki last autumn. The AI utilizes data that the company has collected daily for 14 years through its mobile application across all of its restaurants. At Pincho Nation, customers place all orders through a mobile app, making it the first restaurant chain in Finland to operate with this type of model.
Klara was developed entirely in-house without external suppliers. The development process took approximately two months. The agent is built on Anthropic’s Claude language model and continues to run on Claude today. According to the company, data security has been a priority from the beginning. Klara does not process individual customer feedback; instead, data is anonymized and aggregated before being provided to the AI.
“Our vision is to become Europe’s most data-driven restaurant concept. We adopted technology very early on. We started as an app-based restaurant, so technology has always been our default solution to problems,” Persson says.
Developing the AI agent was not without challenges. In its early stages, Klara was described internally as a “drama queen,” reacting too strongly to anomalies. If a single metric turned red, the agent might urge a restaurant manager to contact their supervisor, even if the restaurant had otherwise enjoyed a successful day. As a result, the system has been fine-tuned to provide direct and honest feedback without overstating problems, while remaining helpful and professional.
Expansion Plans Across Finland
Pincho Nation is currently one of the fastest-growing restaurant chains in the Nordic region. In Finland, it operates restaurants in Tampere, Helsinki, Lahti, and Turku. Over the next three years, the company plans to open ten new restaurants.
The chain is currently looking for suitable premises and franchise entrepreneurs in Espoo, Joensuu, Jyväskylä, Kouvola, Kuopio, Rovaniemi, Pori, Seinäjoki, Vaasa, and Oulu.
According to the company, this expansion is made possible in part by its advanced use of technology, which helps keep fixed costs and management-related workloads under control.
The Helsinki restaurant, located on Bulevardi, opened in spring 2025. During its first year of operation, it welcomed approximately 78,000 customers.
The chain’s success stands out in a restaurant industry that has faced difficult years, with many full-service restaurants struggling and some ending up in bankruptcy.