Within the food industry we believe we will be seeing more and more of what this blog post will refer to as Restaurant IoT; especially as automation moves into parts of the kitchen. Connecting a cash register to a piece of automated kitchen equipment has obvious advantages that will be shown in the example below.
Simplified Restaurant IoT Example Scenario
Consider a basic fast-food restaurant in the future. The menu is hamburgers, fries, salads, and sodas. Each piece of kitchen equipment is fully automated and able to communicate with the cash register, also known as the Point of Sale or POS. The cash register in this example is the coordinator of our Restaurant IoT. It is receiving real-time data about how long each operation takes, such as cooking a burger, or assembling a salad. When an order is entered at the cash register, it will send commands to precisely time every food item to be ready to serve together. Without that the customer might get a hamburger that has been sitting for too long. Alternatively, one might receive fries quickly, but wait longer for their hamburger. This approach will also reduce food waste if the product can be processed only when there is demand.
Connecting Multiple Locations with Restaurant IoT
A chain of restaurants might want to have all their locations report to a central server to allow them to better coordinate their supply chain. The Restaurant IoT network in this case would be much larger. Each subcomponent of the network could report any number of data points and could do so in real time or maybe on a nightly schedule. This data would help the company optimize many aspects such as menu items, supply chain, staffing, etc.
Potential Restaurant IoT Technologies
There are many wireless technologies these days covering various use cases. For short range communication we have WiFi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, etc. For longer range there are cellular networks and LoRa among others. Each of these can also be placed along a spectrum of power usage which would be critical in any battery powered applications. Within a building WiFi is a great choice when you can leverage the existing network. There is no specific wireless or hardwired communications technology that must be used for a Restaurant IoT network. The method best suited to the range, power, and environmental constraints of a given application can be chosen.
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