MenuNest: AI Copilot for Food Entrepreneurs

MenuNest: AI Copilot for Food Entrepreneurs is an AI-powered Streamlit web app that helps food founders move from a rough food business idea to a practical launch plan. Many early-stage food entrepreneurs have recipes, cultural food concepts, or local market ideas, but they often struggle with menu planning, pricing, ingredient organization, allergens, marketing, and launch validation. MenuNest solves this by turning a simple concept into a structured business launch package. Users enter their food idea, business type, cuisine, location, budget, target customers, dietary focus, launch goal, and output language. The app then generates a launch dashboard, business overview, menu and pricing suggestions, ingredient and allergen notes, customer personas, marketing content, launch checklist, and exportable Markdown or JSON reports. The app works reliably in demo mode without API keys and also supports configurable AI provider modes for IBM watsonx.ai, OpenAI, and Anthropic. The first demo focuses on small and cultural food businesses in Italy and Europe, such as cafes, kiosks, bakeries, catering services, food trucks, home chefs, and restaurants. IBM Bob was used as the development partner for workflow design, repository cleanup, Streamlit UI improvements, prompt/schema design, provider configuration, debugging, tests, and final reliability checks. The final test suite passed 164 tests, covering demo mode, validation, dynamic business idea behavior, language support, exports, and multi-provider integration.