The Internet of Things (IoT) has already established itself in many areas – manufacturing, logistics, smart buildings, and smart homes. Big players and large budgets helped make IoT a force in those areas. Now, it is starting to penetrate industries that have traditionally been slower to adopt new technologies. The food service industry is one example, where the Internet of Things is creating real value for businesses that distribute, deliver, and sell food and beverage products.
Why the time is right
The technologies that are necessary to put together an end-to-end IoT solution have now matured, become inexpensive, and are readily available:
- Cheap IoT sensors & actuators
- Ubiquitous connectivity
- Cloud computing
- Edge computing
- GPS
- Artificial intelligence/machine learning
These technologies, when put together in the appropriate way, can help any food service business by enabling:
- Real-time visibility
- Rapid conclusions and decisions using “human+machine” intelligence
What areas of the business are being transformed
Most food service businesses have 3 parts to their operation:
- Warehouse – products are received, stored, and delivered from one or more warehouses
- Delivery – products are delivered to customers using delivery trucks
- Customer locations – products are sold to consumers at restaurants, cafeterias, convenience stores, and vending/micro-market locations
No technology solution is worth implementing unless it can positively affect the business’:
- Assets – the business’ fixed and moveable assets
- People – the business’ employees, supplier personnel, and customer personnel
- Products – the products that the business stocks and sells
How IOT is positively affecting the business’ assets, people and products
Today, simple and easy-to-implement IoT solutions are making food service businesses improve their operational efficiency, increase revenue, and keep their employees, suppliers and customers happy. Specifically, these solutions are helping the managers at these businesses to:
- Have visibility of all the assets, people and products
- Come to data-based conclusions, and make informed decisions that affect these assets, people and products
The table below describes the main questions that these IoT solutions help the managers of the business answer.
How Rattle Tech can help your food service business
At Rattle Tech, we don’t believe in re-inventing the wheel. We are experts at quickly pulling together 3rd-party hardware and software components that are inexpensive and readily available, to put together the right end-to-end solution.
With our expertise and experience in mobile apps, IoT hardware and software, and cloud applications, and our unique ability to understand the exact problem(s) you are trying to solve, we can quickly and inexpensively create an end-to-end IoT solution that helps you answer the questions in the table above.
Contact us to learn more about what we have built for other food service companies, and how we can help yours.