The AI told me to raise my prices by 40 percent but it had never been to a wet market
I run OTSATE, a small lemongrass sauce brand in Malaysia. I’m the founder, the cook and the person who does the numbers, so everything below is one operator’s experience, not a benchmark. Most of my admin now runs through Claude Code, an AI agent that works inside a terminal and can read my files and […] The post The AI told me to raise my prices by 40 percent but it had never been to a wet…
OTSATE is a small lemongrass sauce brand in Malaysia founded and operated by the author, who also handles finances. The author uses Claude Code, an AI agent, to manage Monday's numbers. This includes sales from the previous week, ingredient and packaging costs, bank cash balance, and the author's weekly business decision. The AI provides revenue, food cost percentage, and how many weeks of fixed costs the sales would cover.
However, the AI has gotten things wrong. In July, the AI priced a new product at RM60 to RM65 (around US$14.40 to US$15.60) for five units, but the author realized the AI had used supermarket prices for ingredients, which were significantly higher than the wet market prices the author pays. In late September, the AI suggested frying garlic instead of buying pre-fried garlic to reduce food costs, but the author does not consider labor costs in the P&L.
The author now sets rules for the AI, such as not estimating costs and specifying decisions the AI should not make.
Written by urgent.news from e27's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
