The Challenge
Busy restaurant staff rarely noticed critical HVAC and refrigeration equipment issues before they became emergencies, creating food spoilage risk, and resulting in unnecessary equipment wear and tear, and increased emergency service costs.
The Details
Refrigeration Data For Better On Site Practices: Data from waterproof sensors installed in the QSR fridges/freezers is reliably and regularly communicated to a Smart Commercial Control installed nearby. This data is published in the Cognition Dashboard, and analyzed by Cognition Intelligence. Cognition Refrigeration alerts are built to eliminate noise from normal course operations, such as defrost cycles and inventory access, to indicate true issues requiring attention.
Many of the alerts provided by Cognition shortly after install were the result of poor onsite practices, such as staff leaving doors open for an extended period while restocking a fridge.
With operational data to validate onsite operations and practices, the QSR District Managers were able to isolate problematic locations and/or shifts. Compared to the first two months post installation, Refrigeration alerts are down significantly as on-site practices have improved.
Cognition Intelligence analyzes data to identify operational changes in fridges/freezers, and equipment that requires maintenance. For example, Cognition identified that this Freezer was operating at the high end of the operating range and defrost cycles meant it spent more time out of range than in. This was further exacerbated by staff restocking practices.
Avoiding the break-fix approach to HVAC maintenance: Cognition has helped the QSR lower HVAC runtime, avoiding unnecessary equipment wear and tear while lowering utility costs.
The annualized electricity savings per location are ~$1,500.
Cognition equipment alerts have helped the QSR avoid unnecessary HVAC emergency service visits. Alongside real time information about restaurant temperatures and the ability for other equipment to compensate, District Managers are now able to make better decisions to plan service calls rather than incur emergency service call costs.
Easy Installation Across Locations: Cognition hardware for HVAC and Refrigeration was quickly installed by a single HVAC Pro, enabling multiple location installs per day. With cellular connectivity that works out of the box, quick pairing bluetooth sensors, and configuration completed on a smartphone, the process avoided wifi and security networking hassles that drive up costs.
