Innovation roundup: What’s happening beyond AI

Restaurants embrace batteries to cut utility costs

Yes, technology does come into play with this development. But the real driver is equipment that was around in Grandpa’s time, albeit in a less-advanced form. 

With utility costs soaring, companies like David Energy in New York City are enabling restaurants and food stores to pay less for power by using industrial-scale batteries. Indeed, many provide the electricity-storage devices for free. 

The host establishment uses the batteries to store a charge when electricity demand is lower so the price of the power is as well. The restaurant or c-store then taps the stored electricity during peak demand times to avoid hitting the usage thresholds that trigger much higher rates. It all apparently happens automatically. 

The host facilities usually pay little, if anything, upfront for use of the batteries, and the investment is usually offset by tax incentives or rebates. In many instances, they remit to the supplier a portion of what the user saved by not triggering high-demand rates. 

The arrangement provides the added benefit of easing stress on a power grid when it’s vulnerable to collapse because of a spike in demand, such as during a spell of extreme heat. It can also keep businesses in operation after a wire-downing event like a hurricane. 

The arrangement is already reportedly being used by restaurants in California, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Texas in addition to ones in New York. 

Kraft Heinz tries a different approach to the supply process

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.

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.