Artificial intelligence may not yet be able to replace frontline workers such as waiters, bartenders, salespeople, hotel housekeepers, truck drivers and construction workers, but it is already being used to train them for jobs at companies in Israel and around the world, shortening the time it takes to onboard employees and integrate them into organizations.
As a former co-owner of Vicky Cristina, one of Tel Aviv's trendiest restaurants, as well as Bread Story, Little Italy and other establishments, Eran Hefetz knew firsthand the challenges involved in training employees. Those challenges are particularly significant when it comes to frontline workers from different countries who speak a variety of languages and need to get up to speed quickly.
Necessity being the mother of invention, Hefetz left the restaurant industry and founded Bites, an AI-powered platform that enables companies to create a wide range of personalized training materials for every employee, whether working in the field or in an office. The platform produces content in the company's brand language and the employee's own language, drawing on data analysis and business performance metrics.
The platform is used by companies in Israel and around the world, including Unilever, Shake Shack, Coca-Cola and Electra. Bites, which currently employs 30 people across its Tel Aviv development center and New York headquarters, has completed a $40 million Series A funding round, bringing its total investment to $55 million.
The round was led by PeakSpan Capital, with participation from existing investors Vertex Ventures, Horizon Capital, Rittenhouse Ventures and Lyra Ventures. The funding will support the company's growth, including in the United States, with the goal of turning frontline employee training into measurable improvements in sales, service and operations.
'These are the workers who drive the global economy'
"Bites grew out of a problem I experienced personally while running restaurants in Tel Aviv. I saw that a business's success is determined by what employees actually do and whether they have the knowledge to perform their jobs in the best possible way," Hefetz explains.
He says that at a time when businesses are expected to increase revenue with the same resources, traditional training programs that require employees to log into a learning management system (LMS) often fail to reach frontline workers. That is where Bites' technology comes in, generating the training content itself.
Its AI engine can turn a procedure, document or idea into a training video within minutes, incorporating the organization's branding, locations, uniforms and products. The video is delivered directly to each employee's phone, in their own language, through WhatsApp or Microsoft Teams, without requiring an app or login credentials.
The platform's knowledge base and Ask-AI feature also give each employee access to a personalized information resource, allowing them to ask questions in natural language through a chat interface and receive job-related information whenever they need it.
"Whether in the restaurant industry or real estate, we see that 80% of the global workforce, 2.8 billion people, does not sit behind a computer desk. That applies to agriculture, health care, restaurants, retail, construction, logistics and delivery services," Hefetz says.
"These people are the face and the driving force of their companies. They interact with customers, shape the customer experience, prepare meals in kitchens, sell products and directly influence business revenue. Ultimately, they drive the global economy, and without them, there is no business.
"These workers are essential to the global economy, yet existing training solutions, portals, training manuals and complicated e-learning programs are simply not suited to this audience. When you want to train a salesperson in Israel, Brazil or India, that employee isn't going to open a laptop they don't have and sit through a 30-minute online training module."
'We build a precise DNA based on each company's identity'
Hefetz founded the company alongside Tal Nagler-Almog, its chief operating officer, and Hagai Horowitz, its chief information officer. Nagler-Almog previously managed the psychometric exam preparation department at Kidum, where she met Horowitz, who holds a degree in electrical and computer engineering. Together, they developed educational materials and learning tools for use both inside and outside the classroom, and it was there that they conceived the idea for Bites. When Hefetz met the pair, they brought him on as the company's third co-founder and CEO.
Looking out of his office window, Hefetz points to an Electra construction site, one of Bites' clients. He explains that the workers and managers at the site speak six different languages, including Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew and Russian. Training them requires not only translating each language but also understanding its nuances and idiomatic expressions.
"We target large companies with multilingual frontline workforces that want to improve their business results," Hefetz says. "For us, training is a means of improving business performance, and every company has its own metrics. For one company, the priority is getting as many defect-free products as possible off the production line. For another, it's increasing sales, while others are focused on optimizing resources."
And, of course, this is directly linked to employee performance.
"Exactly. You've hit on the key point. We connect to the company's systems, where all its business information is monitored, and use that data to help the company create short, highly effective and engaging TikTok-style training videos on our platform. That way, employees arrive for their shifts knowing exactly what is expected of them on the ground.
"For example, if the training is for Thanksgiving, employees know which messages they need to communicate and what points they should emphasize in sales or customer service, whether in a store, restaurant, hotel or any other industry you can think of. A PepsiCo truck driver in India, for example, receives a TikTok-style video showing how to arrange the truck before setting out and how to organize products on store shelves after unloading them. Everything is very clear."
How do you tailor the language and practices to each company or organization?
"That's exactly the point. One of the goals of this funding round is to enable companies around the world, employing people in a wide range of roles, to provide personalized training and turn it from an expense into a tool that drives growth.
"We build a precise DNA based on each company's identity and create a highly detailed visual environment. For example, if it's a hotel, we show what the bellhop's uniform looks like, what the chef wears, what the casino dealer wears, and what the rooms, swimming pool and lobby look like. When employees receive their video-based training, it speaks the language of their organization and they can relate to it.
"It's not a video about service in some generic restaurant. Employees see their own uniforms, the plates they serve food on and the tables they serve, because workers need to connect with what they see. Otherwise, it's something generic and devoid of emotion.
"When an employee sees the truck they drive, and the character in the video is dressed like them, holding the same device they use and speaking their language with all its nuances, the content is no longer just a nice-to-have. It becomes extremely effective," Hefetz says.
Bites founders: Eran Hefetz, Tal Nagler-Almog and Hagai Horowitz
(Photo: Tamuz Rachman)
As part of the service, Bites' AI engine also connects to a company's sales, customer relationship management and human resources systems, linking business performance data with learning data collected from millions of employee interactions with its videos.
Based on this information, the company is developing an automated process that identifies declines in performance at a particular branch, during a specific shift or among individual employees. The system then generates targeted training to address the gap, sends it to the relevant workers and measures changes in performance, such as sales generated by a new promotion.
Bites now plans to use part of the new funding to expand its development center in Israel and continue developing the AI engine at the heart of its technology. The investment will also support the expansion of its sales and customer support teams, alongside the creation of a network of partners and distributors to bring the platform to additional organizations.
The company also plans to expand into the banking and insurance sectors, as well as organizations that employ contract workers and external workforces.