Blockchain advancements: Technology of choice in foodservice traceability rises
By Eric Nomis
Fresh strawberries. Photo by Johnny Martinez.
The foodservice industry continues to adopt key technologies to help improve the safety, traceability and profitability of food products. Blockchain has surfaced a solution that fares prominently among these technologies. Originally created as a secure, peer-to-peer ledger system for the purpose of tracking bitcoins, blockchain now fares prominently as a distributed method of tracking food products for various purposes. Can you imagine the ability to track food products from their source all the way to restaurants? This is a main benefit of blockchain technology for foodservice and restaurants—traceability.
Within the food industry, blockchain ledgers can be combined with tracking sensors and other technologies to create a permanent record of a food product’s journey. Thus in the harvesting, processing and distribution journey, blockchain surfaces an ideal solution. “This (blockchain technology) makes it helpful for supply chain applications where you want to securely share information among multiple entities from producer to the restaurant or retailer, for example,” says Kevin Payne, VP of Marketing at Zest Labs, a provider of technologies that help keep product fresh throughout distribution. “And, with blockchain, you can control who sees particular sets of data.” RESTAURANT C-SUITE 33
