Piada Italian Street Food Protects Uptime & POS Data With All-in-On SD-WAN Solution
Customer Profile
- Industry: Food & Beverage
- Location: Columbus, Ohio
- Services: Internet Backup
Restaurant Chain Reduces Hardware By Running Wired & LTE Connectivity Through Cloud-Managed Cradlepoint Routers
Summary
Access to POS services and protection of sensitive customer credit card information are two of the most important factors of success in the food and beverage industry. Piada’s Italian Street Food Restaurants were in need of a simple solution that would allow them to stay operational even when their Internet wasn’t.
To meet these needs while reducing hardware and enabling cloud management of the corporate network, Piada chose Cradlepoint’s NetCloud Service for branch locations.
This solution empowered the company’s network coordinator to maximize limited resources and keep each restaurant always connected to its most critical services.
“We can easily deploy and manage several hundred stores with our small staff — and without NetCloud and these devices, that would be impossible to do.”
Customer Profile
Piada Italian Street Food opened its first restaurant in 2010, with a mission to create fresh, modern Italian food focused on the preparation of high-quality ingredients and attention to simplistic cooking. Its open kitchen design invites guests to share in the experience as chefs craft meals to order: piadas, pasta bowls, and chopped salads, all to be enjoyed in the dining room or on the run.
The company, headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, now has 35 stores in the U.S.
Solution
Piada replaced its legacy architecture of strictly wired firewall devices with Cradlepoint’s NetCloud Service for branch locations. The service includes routing, WAN link termination and traffic management, a firewall, and cloud configuration and troubleshooting — delivered via a dual-modem branch router with embedded LTE, 24×7 support, and a limited lifetime warranty.
Benefits
Seamless Failover for Consistent Credit Card Processing
Before deploying the Cradlepoint service, wired line outages limited Piada to manual or batch credit card transactions, which were laborious, expensive, and easy targets for fraudulent charges.
With Cradlepoint, Piada’s wired primary WAN and wireless LTE backup are through the same device, using SD-WAN services for seamless failover based on business policy. Employees don’t even know the primary connection was ever lost, and guests get to savor the Piada experience.
Business Needs
With new locations rapidly popping up all over the U.S., Piada’s network coordinator, Dave Gifford, chose an all-in-one network solution that is easy to deploy and manage.
Reliable primary WAN with seamless failover was deemed vital, as it is an integral part of a great guest experience. Piada relies on many tools and services that require connectivity, including:
- Point-of-Sale (POS) services
- Gift cards and apps
- Loyalty program services
- Guest WiFi
- In-store music streaming
- CCTV / in-store security
- HVAC monitoring
Also, Piada was hyper-aware of factors affecting data security and PCI compliance. The company needed a solution that would enable best-in-breed security that could be managed easily without on-site IT support at each store.
