Ditto's real-time database operates at the edge and empowers Chick-fil-A to complete its personalized, in-house POS rebuild two years quicker than planned.
We are excited to announce that we have partnered with Chick-fil-A in an effort to modernize their point-of-sale (POS) system. Their next-generation POS system is powered by Ditto's cloud-optional platform and will operate independently of an internet connection, providing more resilience to outages, enhanced speed, and flexible control to deliver a reliable end-user experience.
Ditto is leading the charge in the industry shift towards cloud-optional architecture. Our edge sync provides a constant flow of real-time data across nearby edge devices and up to the cloud when the internet is available. This functionality was a key factor for Chick-fil-A. POS Devices such as iPads and kitchen display systems (KDS) are now far more flexible, enabling them to better handle the needs of their customers and Operators. In Chick-fil-A's case, this ensures that nothing slows down the delivery of customer orders and providing best-in-class service. Chris Taylor, Senior Director, Customer Technology Solutions at Chick-fil-A says it best: “When we discovered Ditto, we pivoted to a data-centric architecture that takes full advantage of the power of modern edge devices,” said Taylor. “The payoff has been enormous. Ditto has enabled us to transform our POS system and meet the needs of our customers and Operators - all while saving our teams and guests valuable time.”
Ditto automatically maintains multiple online and offline transports such as Cellular, Peer-to-Peer Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy, and Local Area Network - what we call the Rainbow Connection. With the Rainbow connection, your applications will automatically switch to the fastest transport available between any two devices. This means that when devices change in proximity to each other or faster transports become available, Ditto will intelligently switch, all without a single line of code. And with our multihop networking and cross-platform support, we enable your apps to sync data across vast distances. We streamline data sync, replication, and storage by providing a unified platform for these tasks, reducing the need for complex cloud-based microservices, and making Ditto extremely simple to build applications with.
As a result, the Chick-fil-A engineering team shortened its POS modernization timeline by years. This time saved allowed their developers a greater focus on user experience, a fundamental pillar of Chick-fil-A's commitment to their restaurant Operators, while the Ditto Platform handled all the networking and data management.
“We want to bring the same commitment to operational excellence and customer care that you see at our restaurants, and extend that to the things guests can't see, like technology,” added Chris. “Ditto moves key operational data between restaurant Team Members quickly, seamlessly and with no round trips to central services. The more control and information we can put in the hands of Operators and their teams, the better they can care for customers.”
“Before Ditto, legacy retail systems tried to fight the brittle nature of cloud-only architectures by introducing on-site servers which only introduced more problems like managing additional custom hardware and unbelievable amounts of glue code. This was no doubt expensive and incredibly difficult to maintain,” said Adam Fish, Ditto co-founder and CEO. “The shift to the cloud over the past ten years has made innovation smoother and cheaper, but restaurants face serious reliability and architectural challenges. Ditto's cloud-optional platform brings true computational power to the edge - providing the best of both worlds. What Chick-fil-A has been able to accomplish with Ditto is truly amazing.”
Read more about Chick-fil-A and the overall cloud-optional trend in an exclusive story from The Wall Street Journal entitled Businesses Look Beyond the Cloud to Run Software.