Wakefern Grocery Stores Spent 80 Years Sharing Infrastructure. Now That Includes the Wi-Fi.
The co-op that turned shared warehouses into a $20.7 billion business is now turning store Wi-Fi from a line item into a revenue stream.
Wakefern Food Corp. is the largest retailer-owned cooperative in the United States, with 48 member companies operating some 365 supermarkets across nine states under banners including ShopRite, Price Rite Marketplace, The Fresh Grocer, Fairway Market, and Gourmet Garage.
Now, through Wi-Fi offload on the Helium Network, Wakefern is beginning to convert the Wi-Fi inside those stores to carry carrier traffic, keeping shoppers connected at a fraction of the cost of indoor cellular antennas.
Making More from What You Own
Wakefern was founded in 1946 by a handful of New Jersey grocers who realized they could not out-buy the big chains alone. By pooling purchasing, warehousing, and distribution, the cooperative grew into a $20.7 billion business with roughly 80,000 associates across New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island.
Getting more use out of expensive infrastructure is not a side effect of Wakefern's business model. It is the business model. Eighty years in, that makes the cooperative's next move a familiar one: the Wi-Fi networks its stores already own now serve carrier subscribers as well. It's the same logic that built the Helium Network itself: infrastructure owned by the people who deploy it, made more valuable by everyone who uses it.
Why Grocery Stores Need Wi-Fi Offload
A supermarket is a hard place to get a signal. Concrete walls, steel racking, and rows of refrigeration cases weaken cellular coverage long before it reaches the back of the store. Large venues usually solve this with a distributed antenna system (DAS), a network of indoor cell antennas that repeats carrier signals through the building. DAS is tremendously expensive to install and maintain, and the economics rarely work for a grocery store.
The existing enterprise Wi-Fi presents a different opportunity. Wi-Fi offload uses Passpoint, a standard built into modern phones, to move carrier subscribers onto the store's Wi-Fi automatically and securely. No app, no sign-in, no splash page. A shopper's phone connects on the way in and hands back to cellular on the way out.
Indoor connectivity problems show up everywhere people gather, from a 100,000-seat stadium to the supermarket down the street. While the buildings could not be more different, the solution to their indoor connectivity problem is the same: Enable the Wi-Fi you already paid for to start carrying carrier traffic.
The Rollout
The first Wakefern stores are live on the Helium Network, with more locations to follow. The deployment is designed and managed by SignaConnect, the managed service provider behind a growing roster of venues on the Helium Network.
Those stores join a network of more than 45,000 locations keeping over 1.4 million people connected every day. And as more carrier traffic moves onto Wakefern's Wi-Fi, the stores earn more from infrastructure they already own.
Want to bring Helium offload capabilities to a grocery store or retail chain near you? Email business@helium.com.
