Café serves chocolate (RFID) chip ice cream
14 May, 2010
category: RFID
Izzy’s Ice Cream Café in St. Paul, Minn. is utilizing RFID technology to give customers real-time updates on all the available flavors in its dipping cabinet, according to a Computerworld article.
The store has more than 100 flavors to its name, but only serves 32 in its dipping cabinet at any one time. The dipping cabinets are equipped with readers which capture each of the flavor’s corresponding labels embedded with an RFID tag.
Information is captured by the readers 22 times every second and sent to a system which updates Izzy’s Web site, so customers can know what is available before even having to come in the store.
The system also projects colored dots on the store’s wall or a TV behind the counter, to allow customers to easily know what flavors are available.
When an employee places a new flavor in the dipping cabinet they also swap out the RFID tag in front of the tub with the one corresponding to that flavor.
Customers who sign up, can get e-mail updates, and soon text messages, when their favorite flavor is being served. Izzy’s also sends updates to its Facebook page and Twitter account.
To read more click here.