A year ago, CompliChef arrived quietly in the UK hospitality technology market with a proposition that a lot of operators were politely sceptical about: an AI assistant that could generate a complete food safety management system in 15 minutes, manage staff rotas in compliance with Working Time Regulations, and sit at the centre of a connected platform covering everything from KDS to click and collect.
Twelve months on, the scepticism is harder to sustain. CompliChef's Alice AI has been put through its paces by independent operators, small groups and individual chefs across the UK, and the feedback has been consistent enough that the platform won The Mise's Editor's Choice for New Technology in the sector earlier this year. The founders haven't rested — the platform that launched in April 2025 is considerably more capable than the one that exists today.
To mark the occasion, CompliChef is running a birthday offer throughout April that The Mise thinks is worth shouting about: free Alice AI for the entire month for any operator who takes out a new CompliChef ecosystem plan.
What You Get
Alice AI sits at the heart of the CompliChef ecosystem and operates across two principal product areas.
KitchenPortal Alice is the food safety intelligence layer. She conducts a 12-question conversational interview about your business — your menu, your processes, your kitchen layout and your team — and generates a complete, EHO-ready food safety management system in under 15 minutes. That means your full SFBB or CCDFSM documentation, your allergen matrix, your cleaning schedules and your temperature monitoring records, all produced in plain English to the standard that environmental health officers expect to see. The one-off cost is £25. This month, on an ecosystem plan, it is free.
StaffPortal Alice is the rota and workforce intelligence layer. She monitors your live schedule against your business's minimum staffing thresholds, surfaces Working Time Regulations compliance risks before they become problems, and answers scheduling questions — who can cover Tuesday dinner? — in seconds, with answers that already account for contracted hours, availability and WTR limits. The add-on runs at £19 per month. This month, free.
Both Alice tools are included free throughout April for new ecosystem plan subscribers, with no commitment to continue beyond your first month if the platform isn't right for your business.
Why Now Is a Good Time to Look
April is also the month the National Living Wage rises to £12.21. Rota management inefficiency — unplanned overtime, last-minute agency cover, overstaffing on quiet shifts — is one of the most recoverable cost lines in a hospitality business, and StaffPortal Alice is directly targeted at closing that gap. For operators absorbing the wage increase, the timing of CompliChef's birthday offer is, whether by design or coincidence, rather well-judged.
The food safety documentation piece is equally timely. The FSA updated its FHRS inspection guidance this week, with new emphasis on documented management systems and allergen records. KitchenPortal Alice generates exactly the documentation that the revised framework requires. Getting it done in April, when new ecosystem subscribers get it free, seems like the obvious call.
The Bigger Picture
CompliChef's first year has been spent establishing that the AI-first approach to hospitality compliance and operations management actually works — not in a demo environment or a technology showcase, but in real kitchens running real services with real EHOs arriving unannounced. The verdict from the operators who have used it is that it does.
Year two, if the founders' ambitions are anything to go by, will be about expanding the platform's reach into the parts of the hospitality sector that have been slowest to adopt digital operations management: independent pubs, care home catering, contract catering, seasonal hospitality businesses. The ecosystem plan's price point and the accessibility of the Alice interface are explicitly designed for operators who have never considered themselves technology buyers.
The birthday offer is live throughout April. Details and sign-up are at complichef.co.uk.