Customers ordering takeaway food from eight restaurants in the Canadian city of Waterloo can now opt to receive their order in a reusable and recyclable food container embedded with an NFC tag that allows the service provider to track each container throughout the reuse cycle.
Once they have finished with a container, customers return it to a drop box where they scan the NFC tag on a reader, informing Ekko — the Waterloo-based startup that developed and supplies the containers — that it is ready for collection, cleaning and reuse.
“[The NFC tags] allow us to track the containers as they leave the restaurant and then when a customer returns them. We can also track them at the sanitisation station,” Ekko co-founder Crystalle Kruis told local media outlet Communitech News.
“Knowing where containers are at every point in time is something that has been a huge problem with some of the business models we’ve looked at.”
A short video shows a customer using the NFC tag when returning a container:
The reusable food containers are available at the Abe Erb Waterloo, Ambrosia Corner Bakery, Clementine Catering, Gayuma, Queen of Hearts Tea House, S&V Uptown, Underground Flavour Group, and Wooden Boat Food Company restaurants and food outlets in Waterloo.
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