Co-founder of Buffalo Market, Sean Howell, recently sat down with Helium's Jacob Swinn to discuss Buffalo Market's deployment of Helium-enabled devices in the field.
Watch the interview or read the transcript below to learn how Buffalo Market's in-house tech stack uses the Helium Network to make them the fastest, most efficient, most transparent food distributor on the market today.
TL;DR:
- Buffalo Market recently partnered with Helium, formally joining the People's Network ecosystem.
- Helium is a blockchain-powered wireless network that employs hotspots (hosted by individuals) to provide internet access to IoT devices like sensors.
- The logistics company uses Helium-enabled sensors for asset tracking of its trucks, cold chain monitoring of deliveries, and observing air quality in and around its warehouses.
- Buffalo Market also provides these devices for third-party delivery partners to ensure consistent transparency across their service.
- By encouraging stakeholders all along the supply chain to adopt blockchain-based data sharing, the company plans to bring unheard-of transparency to the industry.
JACOB SWINN: All right. Hello, everyone. Super excited for yet another ecosystem partner announcement here. I'm here with Sean from Buffalo Market. Sean, you guys signed an MOU with us not too long ago. So you're one of our newer ecosystem members, and we're super excited to have you on board. You want to give just a little intro about yourself and what Buffalo Market is for the community?
SEAN HOWELL: Sure. I'm the co-founder of Buffalo Market, and I lead all of our technology initiatives at the company. We're a food distributor, which means that we pick up goods from the manufacturer and we take them directly to the retailer and put them on the shelves. We use technology to speed that up, make it more efficient, and reduce waste. And for retailers and manufacturers, the big focus is on reducing out-of-stocks at the store level, which increases sales volumes.
JACOB SWINN: Got you. So, sorry if this is a dumb question, but was this a big issue? Like, is it something like you looked at the market and were like, wow, this is something, you know, there's a lot of food going to waste, and these things are being affected. So you started Buffalo Market. Is that kind of the origin of the company?
SEAN HOWELL: It's more of a twist and a turn than that. I ran a blockchain before this and a social network before that, and Buffalo Market was kind of a labor of passion during early COVID.
I love food, think it's delicious. I live in California, but I couldn't buy a delicious tomato to save my life. So I built an e-grocer with my co-founder Adam called RydeOn. We would pick up the absolute best produce at two in the morning from the major produce farmers and then deliver that to people by 7 a.m.
We scaled that company to all of California, and then we had supply chain issues. We couldn't get everyday items from regular distributors. We would order $100,000 of goods, and only $10,000 of items would show up, and then we would have nothing that our customers ordered. So, things like sliced bread and milk and things like that.
And so we ended up having to build our own distribution system, and we weren't thinking about building the tech stack for that. We just did that to be more efficient.
And then the manufacturers started to tell us like, "Wow, you guys are really tech-focused." And we didn't think we were on that side of the business.
Then they started asking us to fulfill their deliveries to our competitors, so we started taking products to Whole Foods and Costco—who were our first customers—which in the food distribution industry is a pretty big win.
JACOB SWINN: Absolutely. Yeah. No, I agree. I actually used to work for a big blueberry farm, and we got into Costco and Whole Foods. It was like we made it, you know? Absolutely.
JACOB SWINN: So how does Helium fit into this? Why did you choose to use Helium? How does it kind of help what you're doing and enable your solutions?
SEAN HOWELL: So, kind of interesting life skills. My social network was a mobile social network that used geo-location, so I was used to using that technology to help gather information and show relevant content.
And so we use that same technology for all of our trucks and taking them to pick up stuff from the manufacturer or take it to the retailer. But if you imagine something like ice cream or bread that needs to be fresh or cold, time matters. Bread only has a 7 to 10-day shelf life. We are able to show that we picked it up on time.
And in the ERP I built that uses mobile geo-location, I could show, "Hey, I was there on time." That's really my tech stack. And so someone could say, "Oh, you edit that to always show that you're on time." Adding that layer of Helium for asset tracking, you know, that's something that you know is immutable and then helps us build transparency, which I think is kind of our game-changing addition to food distribution.
We're trying to be the most transparent food distributor and show everything that happens along the chain.
So asset tracking is one part, and then cold chain technologies the other, right? We take possession of that ice cream. You don't want it to thaw and then refreeze. There's nothing worse than that. No one would know, right? You would take that ice cream and put it on the shelf. The only person that would know would be the consumer. And they wouldn't blame me. They would just be like, "Oh, that's bad ice cream. I'm not buying it again."
So this really ensures that we can improve quality and show that we're an honest broker. So it's a brilliant technology, and it's unbelievably low cost compared to any of the alternatives that are out there running Helium devices. It is quite, quite cheap.
JACOB SWINN: Yeah, no, definitely. That's really cool to hear. So, you're in California, you said? Right. Are you working elsewhere outside of California right now? Are you kinda all over the US?
SEAN HOWELL: Yeah, we deliver to Whole Foods nationally. We deliver to Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Alaska, and Hawaii. So a pretty broad footprint and growing all the time.
JACOB SWINN: Awesome. I mean, you kind of namedropped Whole Foods and Costco already, which is amazing. Are there any other major partners you're working with or that you're looking at working with if you can mention them? Anything like that?
SEAN HOWELL: We actually work with the forty largest retailers. So, Albertson's, Safeway, Kroger's, Wal-Mart. Walmart's pretty exciting for lots of different reasons. One, they're really embracing blockchain, and then they're one of the largest sellers of healthy food products. So—better for the planet, better for you, which was something that kind of surprised me initially. And we're really interested in making a positive impact that way. We got into this because we love food and are environmentally friendly.
In fact, we also use Helium to track pollution. One of our warehouses is in one of the most polluted parts of the country, and so we use Airly devices to track pollution within the warehouse for workers and then externally for the community. So we have a program where we partner with schools and give them Helium devices.
We thought we had to build the hotspot network in kind of remote places, but by the time we even took action on that—in fact, I ended up with all these extra hotspots—since we didn't have to deploy to any of our warehouses because there's total coverage now. We even built some off-grid devices. I have one in my backyard because we just didn't need it in the field.
JACOB SWINN: That's very cool to hear. I mean, I think one thing that, you know—as an employee at Helium—I know rural area coverage is something that definitely could be improved. But I love hearing that kind of story where there's already coverage in those places you thought you'd have to deploy hotspots at. So that's awesome.
Sean Howell: We're in rural agricultural areas where a lot of our warehouses are. So yeah, I was pretty surprised.
JACOB SWINN: Yeah. No, that's great to hear. How about any exciting stats? You know, we always talk about like the number of devices you have deployed or number of users or any kind of like big numbers that might, you know—the community loves big numbers.
SEAN HOWELL: Yeah. Just depends on what you think of as big. It's relative to about 1900 retailers every day. So over a thousand grocery stores. We track our assets on two kinds of devices. I would show one, but I've got my video background on, so it's barely able to show up.
Yeah, so we have two devices in each vehicle. One's the asset tracker, and then one's the cold chain supplier, and then we also provide those to third parties.
So, oftentimes for like a long haul, like taking something from Seattle to California, that company that's providing that service, they don't have a great tech stack, so they end up using our tech stack.
And then we also give them these devices, and they're really low cost. I mean, they cost so little to run on the network, and then they're $80 to $120 a device. We had other devices we were paying $120 a month subscription on. So it's a changer; it feels like we can deploy them.
Because they're asset trackers, you don't lose them either. Yeah. So it's pretty easy to have a stable return on investment there.
JACOB SWINN: For sure. No, that's very cool. How about any upcoming expansions, partnerships, releases? Anything you want to tease a little bit for the community?
SEAN HOWELL: Yeah. So for our ERP, we're taking our tech stack and going all the way down to the manufacturer level. So eventually, the suppliers of those manufacturers will be able to use it, and then we'll have so much of how food is made on the supply chain.
And if you think about some of our companies like Alvarado Street Bakery or Inked Organics, which is one of the top-selling breads at Costco and Whole Foods, to have everything down to the flour on the Helium supply chain, blockchain is pretty impressive.
So, I think we'll be pushing some use cases that will surprise the rest of the Helium ecosystem, even.
JACOB SWINN: Yeah, no. That's really cool, and like you said, the transparency part. I think people nowadays, too, just want to know where their food is coming from and know the journey. And so that's awesome to be able to help with that.
Okay, so you and I are gonna do an Uplink episode. I don't think we have it scheduled yet, but in the near future, so the community can kind of stay tuned for that, and you can dive a little bit deeper—show some demos and things like that. Can you tease a little bit about what you might want to show on the, you know?
Just give an overview. Get people excited for something on the Uplink at all.
SEAN HOWELL: Yeah, I mean—I think what would be most exciting is this thing behind me, seeing actually what it looks like in a truck, how we deliver things and pick up.
So we're gonna have to get that the camera crew ready, so we can show it.
JACOB SWINN: That might be my first live-action Uplink. We'll go in the truck and everything. But, you know, I'm up for it. So, alright, awesome.
I appreciate you coming on. Super excited to have Buffalo Market as part of our ecosystem, and like I said, community, stay tuned for the Uplink coming up soon. You can hear more about what Buffalo Market's doing.
So thanks, Sean, for coming on. Appreciate it!
SEAN HOWELL: Happy to!
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