- Welbilt selected AT&T to connect its KitchenConnect cloud solution, which promises to improve kitchen efficiency, reduce costs and enhance food quality for multi-unit brands.
- KitchenConnect was showcased at the National Restaurant Association Show earlier this week.
As restaurant operators seek to accelerate their digital transformation in response to labor challenges, changing consumer behaviors and increasing cost pressures, Welbilt has partnered with AT&T and Microsoft to help restaurants digitize, simplify and transform their kitchens across the foodservice industry.
Welbilt selected AT&T to connect its award-winning KitchenConnect cloud solution to build upon their restaurant equipment manufacturing expertise. KitchenConnect delivers improved efficiency, reduced cost and enhanced food quality to commercial kitchens, according to Welbilt. KitchenConnect was showcased at the National Restaurant Association Show earlier this week.
“Using AT&T’s wireless IoT networks to connect all the sites for a particular foodservice brand helps us quickly improve customers’ operations through digital transformation, while connecting all of the equipment at a restaurant with Microsoft technology, like Azure Sphere, gives us a great level of trust in the technology and security we are providing to our restaurant and foodservice customers,” said Omar Jacques Omran, Welbilt’s vice president of digital and managing director of KitchenConnect.
KitchenConnect lets restaurant owners and operators quickly deploy the latest approach to digitally transforming their restaurant and foodservice brands. The solution provides secure telemetry by connecting new and existing food preparation equipment with Azure Sphere-powered guardian devices to Microsoft Azure IoT services. With AT&T’s wireless cellular connectivity, one can keep the IoT data separate from other store systems for better scale and security.
Restaurant operators and foodservice retailers may now:
- Monitor kitchen equipment with a single-pane-of-glass approach and use predictive maintenance analytics that can save hundreds of dollars per avoided incident by minimizing downtime and service calls.
- Save crew time by automatically pushing recipe updates to all equipment sites, ensuring that oven profiles are updated to support new product offerings or limited time offers.
- Track food safety and equipment across the restaurant food journey, potentially saving hundreds of dollars a month.
- Save thousands of dollars per year with real-time oil quality, filtration and cleaning monitoring.
- Greatly increase equipment longevity with regular monitoring across all of a restaurant brand’s locations.
- Provide energy management to save costs with high-energy appliances, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), and lighting monitoring.
“Adding Welbilt’s decades of commercial kitchen equipment experience, built into their KitchenConnect software, to the existing AT&T and Microsoft collaboration makes this an extremely compelling solution to the restaurant and foodservice industry,” said Greg Wieboldt, senior vice president, global enterprise solutions at AT&T. “This will enable us to accelerate the digital transformation of an entire restaurant chain in a matter of months.”
“Security by design has become an unnegotiable priority in IoT. With Azure Sphere, Microsoft is providing a unique edge-to-cloud offering designed to simplify the development and deployment of secured IoT solutions,” said Bin Shen, Microsoft’s vice president communication partners, global channel sales. “The triad of Azure’s secure, interoperable IoT platform with AT&T’s wireless network and Welbilt’s industry excellence helps operators create value-added connected restaurant experiences. They can turn data insights into business-critical actions while trusting that their hardware and software are securely connected.”
