Before Yusha Hu built software, she drove the truck.
When the first driver at her farm-to-table distribution company quit, Hu suddenly found herself making deliveries, loading inventory, and learning firsthand how fragile food supply chains can be.
Years later, after leadership roles at Sweetgreen, Chipotle, and HelloFresh, she realized the same problem existed at every level of the industry. Supply chain teams were spending countless hours reacting to problems instead of preventing them.
Restaurant Leadership Conference
During a conversation with Shawn Walchef on Digital Hospitality at the Restaurant Leadership Conference in Phoenix, Hu explained how those experiences ultimately led her to launch Sightline, an AI-powered supply chain planning and management platform built specifically for restaurant operators.
“Supply chain people don’t get fired for inflation,” Hu said. “They get fired for not having product in the stores.”
That reality shaped much of her career.
Supply Chain Problems
Whether she was working with local farms, regional suppliers, or billion-dollar purchasing operations, Hu saw supply chain teams spending enormous amounts of time chasing inventory, managing distributor performance, and responding to disruptions. The work was necessary, but it often left little time for strategic projects that could improve the business.
“We’d have these daily calls where multiple team members had spent a lot of their time that day just putting together reporting,” she said.
At one company, teams received daily inventory files from roughly a dozen distributors. Employees manually combined spreadsheets and reviewed products one by one to understand inventory positions and identify potential shortages before they impacted restaurants.
Then there was the work they actually wanted to do.
“Then you had like 20% of your time left to do the really cool work,” Hu said. That frustration became the foundation for Sightline. Rather than building technology in search of a problem, Hu built the platform around challenges she experienced firsthand as an operator. “I’m really building what I deeply wish I had in my past roles,” she said.
Sightline Solution
Today, Sightline helps restaurant supply chain teams gain visibility into inventory, supplier performance, and future risks before they become operational problems.
For Hu, the goal is simple: spend less time reacting and more time making decisions. Because the best supply chains aren’t the ones constantly putting out fires.
They’re the ones that see the fire coming before it starts.
