Royal Farms has completed integration of edge computing capabilities into all its stores in partnership with Scale Computing, an edge computing solution company based in Indianapolis.
With edge computing, each device in the store processes data closer to the source, or on the “edge” of the network, often at or near where the data is generated rather than being sent all the way to a distant data center.
Royal Farms now runs all its devices in a cluster of three Scale HyperCore servers, so if one fails, operations continue to run, Jesse Wolcott, assistant director of information technology at the 310-location convenience-store chain based in Baltimore, Maryland, told CSP.
That’s the draw to edge computing—reliability on individual pieces of tech can function, even when the internet isn’t working.
When he joined Royal Farms two years ago, Wolcott said the chain had a “super legacy stack,” and in finding a solution, he had to keep in mind the environmental concerns within stores, such as bad power and having racks above dishwashing stations, chicken fryers and breading stations.
“How are we going to [have] the most effective, modern tech while understanding that in three or four years this thing could be full of chicken grease?” he said.
The solution was within Scale Computing because it uses commodity hardware, which means that its parts are readily available, inexpensive and easily interchangeable with other commodity hardware. It offers enterprise functionality unmatched in its design, Wolcott said.
The partnership began in October 2023, and the tech was fully deployed by January across every Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina location.
Sometimes cloud-based technologies don’t work for the convenience-store industry. For example, in the past with a cloud provider, if the internet was down, stores couldn’t function.
“There have always been really good use cases for keeping things on the edge or in your on-premise data center, and I think now the dogmatic call toward pushing everything to the cloud, whether it needed to or not, is breaking up,” said Wolcott. “Use the correct tool for the correct use case.”
Without internet, the only things that stores using edge computing lose access to are credit card payments and loyalty, but everything else functions as normal, Wolcott said.
While each device processes data closer to the source, Royal Farms uses the NCR Radiant point of sale (POS) system, which links almost everything together.
Wolcott’s advice to other retailers is to look at the cost of ownership over a five-year period and make sense of licensing models before diving into new and emerging products.
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