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The Age of Smart Supermarkets

supermarket stalls

Tech and food companies are coming together.

Amazon now owns Whole Foods and Walmart are getting into bed with Google.

Ocado has even opened their own IoT department.

Although the above examples pertain more to the streamlining of ordering food for consumers and the power of digital logistics, the potential for change that comes when behemoths of this size get together is unparalleled.

But, drone delivered carrots are not the be all and end all of the smart supermarket movement. There will be changes across the board when it comes to perishables and IoT will catalyse this shift.

As a monitoring company we’re much more interested in what happens in store and how we can bring the way the supermarkets themselves advance into the smart era.

According to a new report by IGD, 37% of food & grocery firms have already trialled or successfully deployed inter-connected smart devices or products. It also announced that 58% more are planning to increase their use of technology providers to help them embrace IoT opportunities.

IoT will accelerate automation and AI, driving efficiencies and changing the capabilities and resource needed in supply chains. Not only this, the implementation of smart devices may also streamline the way a store is run.

At Hark we’re conceiving a future where real-time monitoring of environmental data will be instrumental in the running of the smart supermarket.

With real-time alerting and powerful insights gained from monitoring stores, machine learning can be used to isolate faults before they occur, saving time and energy on less efficient in-store appliances from fridges, freezers to entire HVAC systems.

Moreover, the capability to analyse data from various stores across regions and around the world in one dashboard means that making sense of the data and running reports in seconds can drive decision making at a global scale.

We’re just scratching the surface of what can be done within the supermarket industry and we’re excited to see where it could lead.

To learn more about what Hark are doing in your industry and to talk about monitoring your in-store set-up or if you’d like to book a demo with our team contact us.

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