Local Pizza Adds Edge Tech

With online orders for takeout and deliveries accounting for 70% of its business, Local Pizza Co. in St. Petersburg, Florida, realized an internet outage would be devastating to its bottom line.

Owner Milen Kolev  embraced tech that increased the productivity of his employees, and enhanced the customer experience, including a cloud-based point-of-sale system that is integrated with third-party delivery platforms;  cloud-based phone system with caller ID and screen pops; cloud-based automated SMS text messaging; IoT sensors, and streaming content and security systems.

[The Connected Restaurant: How Edge, IoT and E-commerce Can Transform the Industry]

At first, Kolev took it for granted that his local cable company would be able to deliver the consistent and reliable broadband internet service that his business and updated tech stack demanded. He soon realized however that this was not the case. And because his business had become so reliant on the technology, every glitch in connectivity translated into lost profits.

In fact, with each internet outage the problems compounded when orders from food delivery services were not received, credit card transactions could not be processed, and the phone didn't work. 

With internet problems happening weekly, the problem quickly became untenable. “More than 70 percent of my revenue comes from take-out and delivery orders, so an internet outage is the kiss of death,” said Kolev. “These situations created havoc with both the staff and our customers because none of our systems worked reliably.”

The Solution

 To solve the dilemma, Kolev initially implemented a 4G failover solution that would switch his data connection to a cellular modem when a cable outage occurred. Although this provided an improvement, it was far from perfect, Working with his local MSP, Kolev ultimately found a better solution from RabbitRun Technologies. Unlike a basic 4G modem, the RabbitRun intelligent edge solution uses SOHO SD-WAN technology to fix internet problems seamlessly.

‘The difference is like night and day. Even with my previous 4G failover solution, an internet outage was always harrowing,” said Kolev. “All of my critical systems would stop working temporarily, and would work sub-par while on the 4G connection because some applications hogged all the bandwidth. RabbitRun fixed everything. Now, business does not grind to a halt when a problem occurs. The phones keep ringing and the POS system can still process orders.”

The full case study is available on RabbitRun’s website.