How Foodstuffs North Island’s IT team weathered recent NZ storms to keep stores operational

Again, came the technology challenge of how to get the stores operational and how to get them reconnected and trading sustainably.

“The work that steadily went on to figure out how we might use Starlink in a network pattern hadn’t reached the end but here we were needing something,” he says. “It was then that the amazing piece of technical work from people in my team came together and tried to figure it out.”

The team of 30 from IT operations and security, architecture, enterprise systems, and customer digital products worked through a process to hash out the concept and then scrutinised it from a security and performance point of view. They then set up an environment to see if it would work in theory, ran tests and made the changes required across various network settings and firewalls that would make it possible to deploy. 

The team deployed the network pattern to its first store to ensure it worked in a live environment. The store happened to be Gisborne Pak’nSave, the supermarket that came to the aid of the Four Square in the earlier cyclone event. 

The solution was then rolled out more widely and the work the team not only allowed trading on cards on wired and wireless Eftpos machines, but it also got all their backend systems, self checkouts, and fuel systems for larger supermarkets with petrol stations on-site. 

“It was a really neat piece of engineering design, but it also [showed] real tenacity to get it done,” he says “We eventually deployed that solution to eight stores. For quite a few of them, a field tech went out on helicopters to get it up and running.”

They even enlisted the help of the organisation’s CEO Chris Quin to get Eftpos units delivered when he was making a trip by chopper to stores that were cut off by road access. 

As power was restored and cell service resumed over the following days, the need for the solution lessened, but Kennedy points out that for a period of 24 to 72 hours, the work the team did meant the difference between a store being able to operate or not.  

But the temporary solution they came up with is not sustainable, Kennedy points out. After moving out of crisis response mode, the team now works on how to design a robust solution that can be deployed in the event of another emergency. They’ll also need to ensure that whatever contingencies they come up with remain current and able to help their stores in areas more vulnerable to severe weather events.

“Yes, we’ve been able to do something really fast, but that’s because we’ve got a consistent network pattern across our stores that we can rely on where it’s deployed,” says Kennedy. “We’ve got a notable team that knows that inside and out, and we’ve got the kind of culture that means people will go the extra mile and make things happen.”