Overview
In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, the restaurant industry is looking for ways to improve efficiency and enhance customer experiences. A leading provider of digital solutions for the restaurant industry has transformed how restaurants operate by offering a comprehensive SaaS-based restaurant management platform. This platform covers a wide range of services, including point-of-sale systems, self-service ordering, mobile payments, membership programs, inventory management, and logistics. Serving over 100,000 restaurants across major cities, the company is at the forefront of driving digital transformation in the restaurant sector.
This case story highlights how the company partnered with EMQX to enhance its self-service ordering system, leveraging EMQX Platform’s real-time data transmission capabilities to create a seamless, efficient ordering experience. By implementing EMQX, the company was able to offer a more stable, scalable, and secure platform, significantly reducing costs and improving reliability, while gaining valuable operational insights for continuous improvement.
Challenge
This industry leader sought to revolutionize restaurant operations by offering an intelligent, streamlined ordering system. The goal was to allow customers to place and modify their orders effortlessly, in real-time, using in-store devices or a WeChat mini-program. In the meantime, the data will be sent to the kitchen printing system.
This hinges on real-time, seamless data synchronization between devices and the cloud platform, which requires a robust two-way communication channel that ensures smooth transmission of user actions to the cloud and instantaneous updates across all connected devices. Additionally, the system must guarantee that order submission statuses from the server are delivered promptly and reliably to enhance operational efficiency.
However, implementing this vision posed several critical challenges:
- Adaptability Across Multiple Devices The self-service ordering platform must support a wide range of store devices and ensure seamless integration for data collection and processing. This includes mobile devices running native apps and mini-programs, as well as point-of-sale terminals operating on Android and Windows systems.
- High Concurrency for Massive Data Given the large user base and frequent ordering activities in the restaurant industry, the platform must handle high data concurrency during peak times. As more customers adopt self-service ordering, the system requires robust cloud infrastructure capable of processing massive data throughput reliably.
- Scalability for Fluctuating Demand With the growth in store numbers and scale, the platform faces significant variations in user activity during holidays and peak times. To address this, it needs the flexibility to scale resources dynamically based on demand fluctuations, ensuring cost efficiency without compromising performance.
- Robust Data Security To prevent malicious ordering attempts and protect user and store data, the platform must implement encrypted data transmission, identity authentication, and dynamic access controls. Additionally, real-time monitoring and auditing are crucial to detecting potential threats, ensuring system stability, and maintaining business continuity.
Solution
To tackle these challenges, the company turned to EMQX Platform, a leading MQTT platform known for its ability to handle high-volume, real-time data messaging. With EMQX at the core of the solution, integrated with other technology stacks, the company could ensure fast and reliable data transfer between devices, enabling efficient and seamless self-service ordering.
The solution mainly achieved the following capabilities:
- Efficient Device Connection: All in-store devices, including mobile apps, self-order kiosks, and point-of-sale terminals, were integrated with EMQX, allowing real-time synchronization of orders across multiple devices at the same table through subscribing the same MQTT topic.
- Operation Reporting and Synchronization: The ordering application preloads menu items and inventory data. When users add items or adjust quantities, the operation details are reported to the EMQX Platform via MQTT. Backend services validate these actions against the current inventory and synchronize updates across all devices at the same table, ensuring data consistency.
- Order Submission Broadcast: Once any user successfully submits an order, the system leverages the EMQX Platform's HTTP API to send a message to all connected ordering devices. This notifies users of the successful submission and clears the current order list.
- Handling Massive Data Streams: The EMQX Platform features a high-availability clustered architecture with dynamic horizontal scaling. It supports millions of simultaneous connections per node and delivers millisecond-level latency, providing a stable, reliable, and scalable foundation for the self-service ordering module.
- Ensuring Data Security: The platform uses EMQX's authentication and authorization mechanisms to safeguard data and operational security. Additionally, it employs secure TLS encryption for data transmission, ensuring the confidentiality and integrity of all communications.
Results
Since integrating EMQX, the company has seen significant improvements in its self-service ordering system. Key benefits include:
- Cost Savings: EMQX’s ability to support large-scale MQTT connections without compromising performance resulted in reduced server costs and more efficient resource utilization.
- Stability and Reliability: The previous system could not handle large surges in traffic, causing delays or downtime during peak periods. With EMQX, the system now runs reliably with minimal latency, ensuring uninterrupted service and enhanced user satisfaction.
- Real-Time Insights: By leveraging EMQX’s data integration capabilities, the company now collects real-time insights on customer behavior and sales through storing data to the databases, helping restaurants make data-driven decisions on inventory management and marketing strategies.
Conclusion: A Strong Foundation for Future Growth
With EMQX Platform’s real-time messaging and scalability, this company has successfully enhanced its self-service ordering business. The platform it provides to restaurants has not only improved operational efficiency but also boosted customer satisfaction. As the company continues to explore new opportunities in big data and AI, EMQX will remain a key enabler in its journey to provide even more innovative solutions for the restaurant sector.