Strawberries are a finicky fruit, requiring precise temperatures to maintain their quality.
Steve Statler, a food safety expert at tech platform Wiliot’s Ambient IoT, said in an interview he noticed the freshness of the red fruit sold at stores has diminished in recent years. He found the best strawberries came from his own backyard or small fruit markets on the side of roads.
“I go to every supermarket looking for decent strawberries, and they either taste like cardboard or go bad in the car on the way home and the next day, they’re mushy,” Statler said.
Ambient IoT’s wireless tracking labels — which contain heat sensing technology that transmits data through Bluetooth and 5G — allow companies to monitor the temperature and humidity of produce. The labels are currently used throughout the supply chain, according to Statler, including by food companies seeking to leverage new supply chain tech.
Maintaining the quality of fresh produce is difficult because of their short shelf life. The aging process for a fruit starts on the farm and continues on the journey to the grocery store, where it can quickly get old in a hot environment. That cycle, Statler said, can be particularly devastating for strawberries.
“They’re not like bananas or oranges because they don’t have a thick skin, a protective layer. They are, by nature, soft and thus more vulnerable to rotting,” Statler said.
The Ambient IoT labels can help food companies and grocers keep track of the life cycle of its strawberries, he said. On Wiliot’s online platform, it can flag if the fruit was put into a freezer or left on a shop floor when it should have been in a refrigerator.
As the food industry has sought to boost the traceability of products, the Ambient IoT labels have also been used to track the risk of foodborne illnesses, like salmonella in lettuce.
According to Statler, the International Fresh Produce Association has indicated an interest in the labels. But the tech platform is not directly targeting food companies yet, instead it is focusing on grocers who they believe have more of an ability to make a change.
“They control many of the last miles to the customer,” Statler said. “Ultimately they will drive this upstream, and that’s how we get Driscoll’s on board.”