Fueling Healthy Options with Smart Pantry Connectivity

In a survey published by the International Food Information Council and the American Heart Foundation, 43 percent of Americans claimed to always be on the lookout for healthy options when shopping, while 52 percent said they were at least sometimes scouting for healthy foods. (Statista, 2019).

This desire for healthier food options has also extended into places where most of us spend a lot of time like offices and schools. Nowadays, more and more businesses are making it a priority to provide their staff and students with fresh lunches, snacks, and more. In addition to healthier food options, customers also have more payment options available to them than ever before. Customers can pull out their cell phone and purchase goods with a debit card or just a tap of Apple Pay, instead of rummaging through a wallet to find cash.

This delivery of healthier food options is a reality thanks to smart pantries, which use real-time inventory tracking to provide offices customized food programs for employees. One of the the keys to the success of a smart pantry is reliable internet connectivity.

Smart Pantries and IoT

Smart pantries need connectivity for basic functionality like credit card transactions, QR code scanning, visibility into inventory levels, and to update nutrition information. They also use connectivity to get an idea of employee participation levels and any other metric that can be used to create a happy, hyper-personalized environment for employees, tenants, students, and others.

So, where can smart pantries get this connectivity? OptConnect provides the flexibility of connecting your smart pantry anywhere there is power without the need for IT departments or cables. We operate on private cellular network security and have multiple options to ensure strong signal strength and quality. We are your connectivity partner, and we take full responsibility to keep you connected. We also make available Summit, our device management platform, at no cost so you can manage your devices from anywhere.

Cellular connectivity provides many advantages for operators and deployers of smart pantry systems. With OptConnect’s fully managed services, operators benefit from:

• Flexible location options – multiple carriers available for optimization in your area
  • Speed to market – plug-and-play anywhere there is power and no need to coordinate with a local IT department where their delays become your delays
  • Faster revenue generation – get connected to the Internet within minutes.
  • The total cost to connect savings – self-healing technology, commercial-grade routers, live person support to troubleshoot and know what's happening in the environment before sending a truck roll, accountable partner to resolve connectivity issues, turn it over to us and we'll take care of it.

To learn more about how we’re connecting smart pantries, please visit www.optconnect.com.