Izzy`s Ice Cream - IC

RETAIL CASE STUDY
RFID Serves Up Success: Izzy’s Ice Cream
“We tested the Impinj Speedway reader side by side with competing
products. It was almost a third better in read rates and sensitivity.
And in a year, we haven’t had one hiccup with the program or hardware.
It’s pretty impressive on the client’s side and on our side in terms of
performance and reliability in a unique environment.”
Steve Haben, AbeTech Senior Software Engineer/RFID Specialist
Izzy’s Ice Cream
Challenge
Izzy’s Ice Cream, an artisanal ice cream
producer in Saint Paul, Minnesota, has
earned an enthusiastic following. With
flavors like Norwegian Chai, Dinosaur Egg,
and customer favorite, Salted Caramel, it’s
not your run-of-the-mill ice cream parlor.
In addition to the standard vanilla fare,
Izzy’s produces high-quality ice cream with
interesting ingredients such as baked goods,
beer, and wine, many obtained from local
sources. And with their innovative, “Izzy
Scoop®,” a one-ounce taster added to each
order, customers feel emboldened to try the
less conventional flavors.
Because of the popularity of Izzy’s products,
they had a chronic problem of unmet
customer expectations. Lines snake out the
door in the peak summer season, meaning
Izzy’s often ran out of favored flavors before a
customer reached the front of the line. Izzy’s
has only 32 spots in their dipping cabinet,
yet produces over 120 different varieties
each year, so the flavor changes can be
frequent. During busy periods, staff wasn’t
always able to accurately maintain the flavor
description displays, and the limited space in
front of the cabinet to make a visual choice
further impacted the problem. Co-owner
Jeff Sommer says he was beginning to sense
a tipping point in customer frustration;
frustration that developed before he’d even
had the chance to sell them a single scoop.
He tried to address the problem by taking
down customer’s names and calling them
when their preferred flavor became available.
But often by the time the customer arrived,
that flavor was already gone, redoubling the
customer’s frustration.
Izzy’s Flavor Up display screen provides
customers with real-time information about
their flavor options.
RFID Case Study: Izzy’s Ice Cream
Sommers wanted a way to provide customers
with more current updates both for the
in-store displays and the courtesy ice cream
flavor availability notifications. Having read
about Walmart’s RFID initiative, and how
a Twin Cities legal firm had used RFID to
track case files, he began to wonder if the
In collaboration with
CLIENT:
Izzy’s Ice Cream
Unique, artisanal ice cream producer
> Established in 2000
> Single outlet, located in
St. Paul, Minn.
> Owners: Jeff Sommer and
Lara Hammel
BENEFITS:
> Increased customer comfort in store
> Reduced unmet customer
expectations
> Automated customer notification of
product availability
> Increased sales
IMPINJ PRODUCTS USED:
Speedway® readers
Monza® tag chips
Threshold reader antennas
LEARN MORE
Impinj
www.impinj.com
AbeTech
www.abetech.com
Izzy’s Ice Cream
www.izzysicecream.com
© 2011, Impinj, Inc.
technology might also solve his problem.
After a lengthy search, he found a willing
RFID partner in AbeTech, who looked
upon the job as a technical challenge.
By nature, the environment inside an ice
cream display case or dipping cabinet
is challenging. It’s cold and moist with
metal prevalent in the ice cream tubs
and cabinet. The challenge was to find
RFID tags and a reader that would work
reliably, given the interference potential
of such an environment, while keeping
costs to a minimum.
How It Works
The first task AbeTech performed was
a site survey to better understand the
location, and determine what would be
tagged. They quickly ruled out the ice
cream tubs. Not only were the frozen
buckets physically difficult to tag, their
tight slot within the metal dipping cabinet
increased the potential for tag damage as
well as attenuation of the radio frequency
signal. By taking advantage of the ice
cream nameplates that go into the display
case to identify every ice cream flavor,
they came up with a suitable solution.
AbeTech attached Confidex Micro
Steelwave reusable tags (powered by
Impinj Monza® tag chips) to the back of
each nameplate, thereby providing the
tag to flavor association necessary for
the application to work.
For the reader, AbeTech discovered
during the survey that the Impinj
Speedway® reader performed almost
a third better than competing brands
in terms of read rates and sensitivity.
Although not an Impinj partner at the
time, this site survey and further tests
conducted in house convinced AbeTech
to become one. This decision also made
available the Impinj reader antenna suite,
which proved to be very advantageous.
The dipping cabinet is quite narrow,
limiting antenna choices. AbeTech tried
various antennas in a variety of locations
in trying to meet Izzy’s specifications
for both appearance and operation. In
the end, the best choice turned out to
be Impinj’s Threshold antenna, originally
developed for boundary crossing
applications. A local metal worker
created custom brackets that suspend
the antennas from the top of the dipping
cabinet in a roughly 45-degree angle.
AbeTech used four Threshold antennas
in the application, all connected to one
Speedway reader located at the bottom of
the cabinet where the freezer compressor
would normally sit.
Four Impinj Threshold antennas suspended
inside the dipping cabinet provide read zone
coverage.
the database is updated. This information
instantly goes out on Facebook, Twitter,
and email signup notifications. Within
the shop, after a three-minute delay, a
short animation begins where all the
flavor dots gently move around, giving
warning to anybody in line that their
options are changing.
Benefits
Although not directly measurable,
Sommers considers the benefits to be
multiple: an increased level of comfort in
the store, because customers have more
warning as to their choices; decreased
unmet customer expectations; more
interaction amongst customers in the
store over their choice of “Izzy Scoop,”
which adds to the atmosphere; scalability
for future increased customer interaction
via social media; and increased sales.
A PC controls the reader and updates
the “Flavor Up” database. Within the
store, graphical displays of flavors,
where large colored dots with associated
titles represent the various available
choices, appear on a TV monitor and
are projected onto the wall behind the
dipping counter. A similar display appears
on the company website.
Custom nameplate holders provide enough
separation between tags and metal surfaces
to enable accurate reads.
Whenever employees change out
an ice cream tub, they also slide the
corresponding nameplates into the metal
bracket. The reader, which continually
reads the tags, picks up the new tag, and
Impinj, Speedway, and Monza are either registered trademarks or trademarks of
Impinj, Inc. Other brands and names may be claimed as the property of others.
RFID Case Study: Izzy’s Ice Cream
Impinj, Inc.
701 N. 34th Street, Suite 300 Seattle, WA 98103 www.impinj.com
rfid_info@impinj.com Tel: 206.517.5300 Fax: 206.517.5262
© 2011, Impinj, Inc.