Hickory Farms has been a dedicated purveyor of fine foods such as specialty meats, cheeses and assorted delicacies across America since 1951. This shopper focused company operates seasonal kiosks throughout the US and Canada during peak holiday months. As such, they require a network system that is easy to set up and can be deployed rapidly.
“Peplink’s InControl suite allowed us to be more pro-active in managing kiosk connectivity than ever before. By being able to contact a store to improve device or antenna placement before the store even knew there was a potential issue, we were able to provide our shoppers with the best checkout experience possible.”
– Darrell Woolaver. Manager of Retail Applications, Hickory Farms.
Challenge
Some of these retail environments are rapidly deployed for short periods of time. For example, they are set up for a seasonal promotion and then removed until next year. Regardless, reliable internet connectivity is required for credit card processing machines. This is also necessary to provide staff with access to corporate resources. And depending on the type of kiosk, providing public Wi-Fi is also desirable.
Solution
Hickory Farms selected Peplink’s Pepwave MAX BR1 LTE for its unique features which includes redundant SIM slots. Due to this, Hickory Farms can use SIM cards from two different network carriers for WAN diversity. Because of this, the MAX BR1 can maintain connectivity by failover when one network carrier is unavailable. The MAX BR1 is also capable of providing VLAN to keep the store connected via Wi-Fi. This results in increased security as sales transactions from POS (point of sales) terminals are securely carried through the router. In addition, measuring a compact 1.6 x 5.8 x 5.0 inches, the unit takes up minimal space and is easy to setup. Finally, InControl2’s cloud configuration backup and restore feature gets store kiosks set up with minimal store intervention.
Result
This resulted in better service and increased customer satisfaction since they deployed the solution to corporate stores all over North America. In addition, Hickory Farms has gained great visibility into kiosk up-time and network health by using Peplink’s InControl2 to manage their networks.
Deployment
InControl2
Save configuration time, minimize truck rolls, stay on top of the status of your network, and proactively resolve any emerging problems with speed and precision.
MAX BR1 Classic
Industrial – Grade 4G LTE/3G Router
