For anyone in charge of a network of roller grills, coolers or heating bins, a modern convenience might be a smartphone app, something that would send an alert if coffee temperatures at a store were too hot or deliver efficiency reports on a chain’s refrigerators.
Unfortunately, such apps are largely food for the imagination. That’s because for these apps to work, heating and cooling devices need to digitally “talk.”
“Legacy equipment is an issue because the life cycles of some of these devices is long,” especially with regard to more robust workhorses such as ovens and fryers, says Charlie Souhrada, director of member services for Chicago-based North American Association of Food Equipment Manufacturers (NAFEM). “And from an operator’s perspective, most just want the equipment to work reliably and consistently. They know technology can monitor food and diagnose issues, but most operators just want to move [product].”
Simply put, demand for connectivity, at least in the past, wasn’t there.
“Most legacy devices don’t have USB [universal serial bus] ports or aren’t equipped for Cat5 or Cat6 [Ethernet] cables or Bluetooth [wireless technology],” says Mike Merrill, a social-media consultant and director of marketing for ReachLocal Inc., Woodland Hills, Calif. “But if [these devices could] be connected to the Internet … it changes how you manage maintenance, so you can use foodservice [analytics] in the cloud to see when performance [is optimal], then roll that up through a lot of stores.”
While such incremental savings may not help single stores, Merrill says, the pennies grow exponentially for large chains.
That’s not to say benefits don’t exist for independents. Merrill and others believe “talking” devices will eventually yield benefits for the industry, especially as the channel moves further into foodservice.
Maintaining proper food-safety protocol is an obvious opportunity. “When you think about FDA regulations, E. coli and food handling, [device] communication can be one way to back up your current [processes] and know when equipment needs maintenance,” Merrill says. “Technology today can even tell you when a particular knife was used, or when it was last sharpened or sterilized.”
Such futuristic discussion may not seem so farfetched in an age of GPS tracking and even cellphones, but the legacy hurdle is just one part of the larger puzzle.
The language with which devices communicate has yet to be standardized. Barry Haaser, executive director of LonMark International, San Jose, Calif., says his organization is working to develop standards, which up until now have been “largely proprietary” or created by individual companies and essentially closed to other devices.
The not-for-profit LonMark has based its work on international standards that enable the free flow of data from one device to the other, regardless of manufacturer. “Once you have the data, there comes the ability to integrate all kinds of things,” Haaser says. “There’s the possibility of feeding data to screens in the store and mobile devices like iPads and phone apps. There’s no limit.”
Still, while standardization is a necessary step toward device connectivity, a bigger issue may be more cerebral: an apparent “crisis of the imagination.”
Merrill of ReachLocal says that people have to envision “use cases” for these technologies for them to drive the demand that fuels development. “If costs come down, you can implement [numerous projects],” he says. “But people haven’t thought of the use cases.”
Speaking of Use Cases …
A veteran of the manufacturing world, Merrill says equipment efficiency and device monitoring were major parts of that segment’s profitability, in both productivity and ensuring safety (i.e., keeping health-care and liability costs down).
Maintenance issues provide a strong initial platform for connectivity, he says. From there, devices can communicate when they were last serviced, are overheating or losing refrigeration control.
With regard to foodservice, issues of proper heating and cooling relate directly to public health and making sure food is safe to eat. More than likely, these issues tie back to regulatory mandates, and the need to accurately record what has and hasn’t been done to keep equipment in proper working order, Merrill says.
But if retailers were to begin thinking in terms of added profitability, use cases may start to involve the supply chain and avoiding out-of-stocks. Officials in San Francisco have installed sensors in parking garages to help manage and communicate where spaces are available. Similarly, sensors can tell retailers, to a high degree of accuracy, inventory levels of specific products.
“Maybe you monitor one of your most profitable alcohol items with a simple sensor,” Merrill says. “That sensor can tell the staff when you’re below stock, so it’s about maximizing profit.”
Similar proximity technologies can help managers walking into a store identify where a particular product is, aiding in tasks such as inventory and audits.
Beyond operations, such tracking and communication capabilities can benefit consumers. Referencing a scene in the Tom Cruise movie “Minority Report,” he says sensors can identify a customer and notify him or her that a favorite product is on sale, just as that person walks past the item.
In a c-store environment, these opportunities may resonate, especially when the issue is manpower. “If you think about staffing costs, and here you have a technology that’s 95% correct, then why not use the technology … to reduce hours and increase profitability?” Merrill says.
If you think this sounds unreal, who’d have thought a decade ago a cellphone would deliver more in 2013 than most computers did in 2003?
Of course, the difference between concept and reality can be cavernous and frustrating. Dirk Heinen, CEO of Austin, Texas-based Acumera, executes connectivity with products handling the fuel side of the business. But customers are always asking about alerts for back-room doors that get propped open or when refrigerator or deli-case temperatures fall.
A deeper issue, Heinen believes, is one of balance. Sometimes giving people too much information can lead to overload and inertia. “Everyone has a slightly different work process,” Heinen says. “So we give customers the tools to define what level of granularity they want …. and who gets [the data] so it’s actionable.”
March Toward Connectivity
The move toward connectivity may be inevitable, according to Haaser of LonMark. In California, retail operations over a certain size will soon be mandated to have devices that can be accessed digitally, he says. It’s part of the state’s energy regulation mandates and the need to connect with devices that require high energy use.
Worldwide, 50,000 to 80,000 pieces of kitchen equipment are already network-enabled, he says, with evidence of growing connectivity predicted to emerge in the second half of 2014. Retailers will also start to see more connected devices and related dashboard and reporting solutions at next year’s trade shows.
A major effort by Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald’s Corp. may also influence the pace of connectivity. The fast-food giant has been conducting worldwide trials with connected devices and will make a “go or no-go” decision in the first part of next year, Haaser says.
Consumer Apps?
With momentum building for device connectivity within businesses—whether via sensors or apps—the question quickly spins to the evolution of foodservice apps aimed at consumers. Jason Toews, co-founder of OpenStore by GasBuddy, Gaithersburg, Md., says much of the current work tied to c-store apps has centered on pricing, store location and digital coupons, with mobile payment becoming more of a priority for retailers.
Using the app to order food is probably a function that will develop further down the road, he believes, saying integration challenges between the point-of-sale (POS) and kitchen equipment stand in the way. Having said that, he points out how the industry is clearly moving into foodservice, which may hasten app evolution.
And while food ordering may not be on the menu for foodservice apps today, Toews says c-stores are finding value with apps in general.
“It’s a great way to connect with people on the go,” he says. “If they want to get … information on a brand, then an easy way to do it is with an app.”
Taking Temperature on an App
One family of products may help retailers better visualize what a foodservice app would look like, as the bigger picture involves a series of devices and software solutions.
E-Control Systems, Sherman Oaks, Calif., has produced such devices and solutions since 1998, with one line involving a temperature-taking device that connects with a centralized dashboard. At the store, a hand-held device with a probe allows employees, as a matter of their routine list of things to do, take the temperature of certain foods, with the data flowing back up to the “cloud.” The software gathers the information and funnels it into a dashboard format, with the data then flowing to the smartphones of designated individuals.
Other monitors in the company’s portfolio can measure device activity in a more consistent, automated mode.
All these technical options, according to Eran Bernstein, chief technical officer for E-Control, will eventually become commonplace, especially as the importance of foodservice increases.
“You’ll see it used to protect a brand from liability … [via] heated and refrigerated foods that have to be protected to make sure nobody gets sick,” Bernstein says. “Then there’s the issue of holding product too long to the point where it doesn’t taste good. And a third aspect would be spoilage, where a store could have a couple of thousand dollars in food that they don’t want to go to waste.”
Getting Connected
Momentum appears to be building around the ability for devices to communicate with each other and to relate important information to c-store managers and maintenance staff. Here’s a few of the more compelling reasons:
- Maintenance efficiencies and savings. Across a large network of stores, staff can monitor equipment efficiency to avert breakdowns and increase energy efficiency.
- Health and food-safety concerns. Government mandates on food handling and safety may spur the move to devices that can alert managers to equipment failures.
- State energy regulations. In an effort to manage energy, the state of California reportedly will require connectivity with devices at stores over a certain size as a way to help regulate its overall energy consumption.
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