RFID Tracks Sushi Movement

Blue C Sushi announces that it has implemented an RFID food monitoring system from Intermec with business process technology from Microsoft that allows the restaurant to track its food and automatically calculate customers' bills.

Blue C Sushi restaurants are based on the concept of kaiten sushi where customers select plates of sushi from a rotating conveyor belt that winds through the restaurant moving past every table. Customers pay based on the number and types of plates they choose. At Blue C Sushi, plate colors indicate prices for specific items.

Whereas the original barcode tracking system could only track the time a plate was put on the conveyor belt and that a customer had pulled it off, the new RFID system provides more detailed business intelligence, like what item is on the plate, how long it has been on the conveyor, which chef produced it and which menu items are running short.

"This technology improves our understanding of what customers want, and what items are popular at particular times or on specific days of the week," says James Allard, co-founder of Blue C Sushi. "It has greatly improved how we plan for and order food and helps us centralize the ordering of food from one location, while helping us reduce waste."