Brooklyn, N.Y., startup Brouha has launched an RFID-based system to enhance neighborhood shopping by allowing residents of Brooklyn apartment buildings to use their building’s identification and access cards to automatically receive loyalty points and discounts from stores and restaurants within their neighborhoods. In addition, the firm offers the same solution for use by individual retailers, and to function as a type of a loyalty card. For both types of applications, the system tracks how frequently a customer visits a participatingbusiness, and offers rewards via text message on a user’s cell phone. The technology is also being marketed for use at conferences and hotels.
In the case of the residential neighborhood solution, says Chaz Mee, Brouha’s president, RFID readers will be installed in groups of up to 15 stores within approximately six neighborhoods, each surrounding a specific apartment building, by the end of this year. Building residents can utilize an enhanced version of their existing access-control card with built-in Brouha technology, in order to gain rewards at the neighborhood stores.
The company’s name is derived from the word “brouhaha,” Mee says, as he liked the word’s definition of commotion. “It represents this magical feeling a customer gets when they walk into the store and their phone automatically buzzes with something special just for them,” he explains. The firm was incorporated in March 2011, and the system has since been piloted by The West Brooklyn, a beer, wine and coffee bar on Brooklyn’s Union Avenue, specifically for that store, with a single RFID loyalty card used only at The West Brooklyn.
In the case of the neighborhood solution, each apartment tenant is provided with a plastic building-access card that also functions as a loyalty card. The card is supplied by Brouha (the company is currently employing PVC cards with passive EPC Gen 2 RFID inlays made with Impinj‘s Monza 4D chip). When a user first obtains the card, the text on that card instructs the customer to send a text message from his or her mobile phone to a specific address, after which the phone number and the unique ID number encoded to the card’s EPC RFID inlay are automatically linked together in Brouha software residing on the company’s cloud-based server.
The store’s RFID interrogator is designed to be entirely standalone, Mee says, thereby making its installation unobtrusive. It consists of an Impinj Speedway Revolution R220 reader connected to a floor mat with a built-in Times-7 antenna. The interrogator reads the ID number encoded to the card of an arriving customer, and then transmits data to the Brouha server via a cellular modem. The company opted not to employ a wired or Wi-Fi solution to send information from the reader to the server, explains Federico Rodriguez, Brouha’s CTO, since wiring could be difficult in some stores—and not all locations have a Wi-Fi connection, or would want the system to compete with other data on their Wi-Fi connection.
During the next few months, Brouha plans to begin rolling out the system as a neighborhood card for residents of large apartment buildings in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn. In this case, Brouha is partnering with a business that provides front-desk services for apartment buildings, including access cards for residents (that company has asked to remain unnamed). Those access cards will come with a built-in passive EPC Gen 2 RFID inlay for residents choosing to use the Brouha service. Brouha is currently in the process of identifying about 15 small or midsize businesses within the neighborhoods around each building. Each participating store will have a reader installed in its front doorway, and can then set up instructions indicating which types of rewards that it may offer regular customers.
For apartment residents, the cards could be used at a variety of shops, and could remain in a wallet or purse at all times. Whenever the card (in a user’s pocket, wallet or purse) passes over a reader at a store entrance, the read data—which includes the card’s unique ID, as well as a time and date stamp—is stored on Brouha’s server. Each store can set up its own directives in the software to determine what content is sent to shoppers. For example, a coffee shop could provide a free beverage after five visits. The software would determine when a card’s unique ID number had entered the store five times, and then offer the free drink to the card’s owner by sending a text message to the phone linked to that card. Customers would then show that text message to a staff member at the counter in order to receive the free drink.
With the pilot at The West Brooklyn, which began in July of this year, 170 customers received RFID loyalty cards provided by Brouha. Their visits to the cafe are counted, and product offerings are made according to the number of times that a particular person has visited. For instance, a patron may receive a redemption code, along with a text message stating, “Welcome to The West. Since this is your third visit this week, get two for one on any beer or wine”.
“The phone is a really good way to have a more one-on-one relationship between us and people who come to the café,” says Esther Bell, The West Brooklyn’s owner. “That’s what was interesting to me. My customers are delighted by it. Either they’re fascinated about the new technology, or they just really like getting offers and other information automatically right when they walk in. It feels more special to them.”
Initially, Mee says, the hardware may be offered free of charge to stores participating in the neighborhood program, while they try out the technology. Typically, Brouha intends to lease the hardware to each store, which will be billed as part of the software service (usually between $100 and $200 per month). The software service consists of server access to customer data, if so requested, as well as the ability for the store to send reward messages to customers. Additionally, Brouha can provide reports to the stores, indicating, for example, the amount of traffic entering a particular shop at specific times, based on reads of cards carried by patrons, as well as how often each person visits, and when.
In addition, Brouha has been speaking with conference managers about the possibility of using the technology at conferences. In this case, event attendees could be provided with Brouha cards, and readers could be set up at some event booths, enabling the companies exhibiting at those booths to send information to visitors’ phones, based on the booths they enter. This could include promotional materials about the company, or perhaps a demonstration sent to those who pass a booth but do not necessarily stop. The system could also be utilized by hotels, Mee says, enabling hotel management to identify when a specific guest is arriving, and potentially sending information to his or her phone, such as a room assignment, a list of spa services, a restaurant reservation or happy-hour information.
In the future, Mee reports, Brouha hopes to offer the RFID tag in the form of a key fob, as well as the card. However, the company does not immediately plan to include any point-of-sale functionality, he says, noting, “We wanted to keep it simple.”