Innovation roundup: What’s happening beyond AI

Restaurants embrace batteries to cut utility costs

Every food manufacturer has a system for getting products from the factory to the wholesale buyer. By necessity, each also has a procurement process for securing the supplies it needs. 

As part of a major global restructuring, Kraft Heinz is combining those two functions into one end-to-end chain, overseen by a single C-level executive. Janelle Aydin will hold the newly created position of global chief procurement and supply chain officer. 

Flavio Torres, formerly global chief supply chain officer, will transition out of that role but will advise the company through the transition process, Kraft Heinz said in announcing the restructure.  
“Combining Procurement and Supply Chain into one central function allows us to more effectively manage our end-to-end value chain and strengthen supply chain resilience,” Kraft Heinz CEO Steve Cahillane commented in the announcement.  

The food-processing giant is undergoing the global restructuring instead of going ahead with its controversial plan to split the Kraft and Heinz components of the concern back into two companies. The plan now is to reorganize the corporation into three geographic divisions: North America, Europe and Pacific Developed Markets, and Emerging Markets.

Kraft Heinz tries a different approach to the supply process

Distributors will be banned from making normal deliveries to restaurants and other food-away-from-home businesses in midtown Manhattan during most of the eight days World Cup soccer games will be played in the New York area. 

The ban will be in effect from six hours before the scheduled start of the games to three hours after the matches conclude. The restriction could run from as early as 8 a.m. to as late as 11 p.m.  

The limits will be in effect only in midtown, specifically from 30th Street north to 60th and from the East River to the Hudson River. However, the measure technically bans trucks from cutting through that area as well, meaning distributors will have to change their routes for serving food-away-from-home businesses north and south of the targeted area. 

City officials noted that similar restrictions have been adopted by many of the cities that will play host to World Cup fans this summer. 

 The New York-area World Cup games are scheduled for June 13 through June 19. Local businesses are advised to reschedule deliveries or find alternative means of staying supplied. 

Could crypto solve restaurants’ credit card problem?

After years of trying to temper credit card swipe fees, food-away-from-home companies suspect they could have a solution in crypto coin. Actually, their hopes center on a particular type called stablecoin, or a virtual currency that has a constant value because its worth is pegged to an actual currency like the U.S. dollar. Essentially, it acts as a virtual legal tender. Customers could use it to pay their tabs without a significant charge to the merchant. 

Yet a group of merchants who depend on credit card transactions say Mastercard and Visa are already digging into their deep pockets to prevent stablecoin and other high-tech forms of consumer payments from catching hold. The communication from the Merchants Payment Coalition notes that Mastercard has announced plans to acquire BLNK, a stablecoin company. 

The letter asserts that swipe fees would be eroded if there were more ways for consumers to pay their tabs or for merchants to get reimbursed for what guests charged on credit cards. Stablecoin could provide an alternate payment option, the letter stressed. 

It was signed by 26 companies. 

Swipe fees, or the charges levied by banks for processing credit card transactions, have grown into restaurants’ third-largest expense, behind food and labor costs.