News · Upvendo · Trade fair
Upvendo atHoreca Expo Ghent.
AI self-order on the stand, on real hardware, taking real orders. Ghent, November 2025.
Upvendo took AI-driven self-ordering to Horeca Expo in Ghent, on real hardware, taking real orders in front of the people who would have to run it.
Why the fair matters
Horeca Expo is where Flemish hospitality buys. Operators arrive with a specific problem, usually staffing, and they are not interested in a slide deck about it.
Upvendo exhibited the way the product is meant to be judged: a working kiosk, on the stand, taking orders end to end.
Operators were not asking whether a kiosk can exist. They were asking whether it can take an order without a member of staff standing next to it. Only a working machine answers that.
What was on the stand
The self-order kiosk and the iPad-based point of sale, running the same software that runs in restaurants today. Visitors placed an order themselves rather than watching a demonstration.
The point of sale was not a separate product built for the fair. It is the same iPad setup a restaurant already runs, sending cleaner tickets to the kitchen.
Guests order and pay on their own, and the kitchen gets a cleaner ticket. That is the argument, and it was easier to make with the hardware switched on.
Upvendo Magic
Upvendo Magic is the platform's AI layer. It generates menu descriptions, photos and allergen information straight from the existing point of sale.
The data is already in the point of sale. It does not have to be photographed, written out and typed in again before a kiosk can sell from it. Allergen information comes from the same source as the menu, not from a second list kept beside it.
Who was on the stand
The team on the stand ran the deployments, so the answers about installation, payments and integration came from the people who do it.
Those are the practical questions: what installation involves, how payments are handled, and how the kiosk talks to the system a restaurant already runs. They were answered on the stand rather than in a follow-up call.
The wider point
Upvendo is the clearest example of how The Mazi Group works. Upvendo grew out of technology Mazi Beauty had already built for itself. It was proven on working floors, then rebuilt into a company of its own.
Its market is global QSR rather than a single country. The stand in Ghent showed the same software that runs on restaurant floors in other markets.
Mazi Beauty went on to take the same technology to the pharmacy counter, with skin analysis. That part of the story belongs to Mazi Beauty. What Upvendo brought to Ghent was the restaurant version, on the floor.