“Advent of multi-cooking functionalities in smart cooking appliances to push demand for the market. Smart kitchen appliance market will register a CAGR of close to 23% by 2023 (Source: ResearchAndMarkets).”

Today, the food industry is becoming smarter through a combination of IoT allied products and intelligent algorithms. IoT devices can issue alerts when temperature changes affect product quality, anticipate equipment failures, and schedule maintenance as and when required, which will help in reducing any downtime and improve operation efficiency.

In restaurants, sensors can be attached to kitchen equipment that can gather data during regular intervals and upload that data to a cloud-based platform. Through the data, the restaurant workers can easily access the status of all the equipment in the kitchen and managers can be alerted if any equipment is deemed to fail and cause any hazard. Moreover, all connected equipment in the kitchen can help restaurants to come up with energy saving practices in order to cut costs and help the environment too.

Let’s see some products that are impacted by IoT in restaurants:

Smart Deep Fryer

Deep fryers with innovative electronic switching devices for electric or gas energy control has more demand in the market than any outmoded electrical contractors or gas controls.

In deep fryer, the insulated frypot is attached with it to reduce standby energy by an extra 10% and it comes with a standard specific controller that checks the exact oil temperature and regulates cooking time for steady high-quality production.

Digital enabled deep fryer has digital thermostat controller which enables user to set and see actual temperature on screen and can automatically provide very precise cut off of temperature. This user-friendly deep fryer is designed for safety preventing dangers with standard quality.

Role of IoT in deep-frying:

• Connected air fryers allow you to monitor the cooking remotely as per the load size, primary product temperature, and moisture content.
• Oil management IoT sensor warns the operator when oil needs to change. IoT sensors monitor deep fryer data like temperature, and pressure, etc. that helps in real-time controlling. Beyond that it keeps a tab on any problem that may be caused to our bodies due to overused oil.

Intelligent Vending Machine

Vending Machines are a great way of procuring food items at rest stops and other public places. Unfortunately the increased adoption also brings with it the complexity in managing the operations and maintenance. IoT powered vending machines enables remote monitoring and controlling of the operations and diagnostics.

IoT enabled vending machines have the following features

• Intelligent vending machine integrated with strong temperature sensor and a computer chip can help in automated temperature control
• Intelligent vending machine integrated with IP Camera and a Connected Web Portal allows the operators to collect product campaign feedback instantly.
• Intelligent payment option brings great accessibility to consumers through its variety of payment methods, such as debit or credit cards, mobile wallets, QR codes or internet payments.

Smart Oven

Oven is an essential cooking equipment in restaurants, service stations, hotels, bars and snack bars. Smart ovens aims at combining cooking performance and convenience. This comes as a great relief especially when the restaurants are extremely busy and are under pressure to keep bringing quality food to the table.

Smart ovens can connect the device to a companion app and assists the staff to cook with ease without having to worry about the temperature the item has to be baked at. This app can be made to connect with other home assistant devices such as Google Home and Amazon Echo etc. Implementation of IoT in oven can notify the customers about the operation problems and energy consumption.

IoT enabled ovens have following features which make it more popular

• Early Alerts to Operating Issues – Smart ovens can generate pre-emtive alerts in case of any operational issues, which allows the user to avoid breakdown of the equipment.
• Cost Effective – Smart ovens help to minimizes raw materials utilization by up to ten percent, lower energy consumption by up to 28 percent and take up less space. It is also expected to benefit from reduced labor cost and cut down time and effort in hiring and training new staff in preparing quality meals.

The above is just an illustration on the proucts and kind of use cases that can get impacted through IoT enablement in Kitchen appliances. Through implementation of connected kitchens, the food service companies and restaurants can reduce their energy consumption in kitchen appliances like oven, refrigerators and mixture. It also helps in automation of compliance management in oven to vending machines, and upgrading of line of prospect into daily process.

eInfochips has been the technology partner for the retail and food industry for the last couple of decades. We have been continously involved in transforming products through Device, Digital, Quality, and Silicon Engineering. If you are looking for a technology partner, that can help you transform your products and help you evolve as a business, then please do get in touch with us.