The shifts in workplace food that make intelligent fridges a strategic essential

As part of Tech Table by Pej, we spoke with Tim Oldeman, co-founder of Husky Intelligent Fridges.

Coming from the refrigeration and hardware side, Tim works at the point where IoT, commercial kitchens and contract catering meet. His vantage point is shaped by six years of deployments in offices, factories and educational campuses across Europe.

The future of guest experiences

The impact is clear. A staffed canteen produces and serves food for only a few hours a day. A network of intelligent fridges extends that work across all hours, from breakfast at seven to a snack at three to a dinner bag at six.

For Tim, an intelligent fridge is not vending 2.0. It is the future of guest experiences, a connected point-of-sale that knows what is inside, when items expire and what guests take as they close the door.

Guests can open the door, see the food clearly, pick up and compare items, choose more than one thing at a time and check out instantly. It is less of a machine and more like an always-open store inside the workplace.

Hybrid working demands food beyond the lunch window

Hybrid work has erased the old “everyone eats at twelve” pattern. Mondays and Fridays are quiet. Middle-of-the-week peaks are unpredictable. People arrive early, leave late and work around meetings.

A traditional canteen cannot stretch to all those moments, but fridges can. They turn a single square metre into service before, between and after the core lunch rush. In Tim’s words, the restaurant remains the heart, but fridges carry the offer into more rooms, floors and time slots.

Waste reduction through data and dynamic pricing

Uncertain attendance means operators must often overproduce. Without a 24/7 outlet, unsold items become waste.

Intelligent fridges change that equation. Each item is tracked individually, allowing automatic markdowns as products approach expiry, clear labelling for guests and alerts for staff. Many sites see waste fall dramatically simply by giving meals more hours and more chances to sell.

New models for a market that is shifting fast

Only a small share of offices commercially allow for a full canteen. Yet all still have employees who need good food, often in areas with no alternatives.

This gap has created a wave of new entrants building fleets of intelligent fridges. For traditional contract caterers, the opportunity is twofold: defend existing sites by offering canteen as a service, and expand into new untapped locations with a central kitchen plus satellite fridges.

A unified interface where everything connects

This is where Tim sees Pej as fundamental.

Guests should not have to use different systems for each point of purchase — one app, one badge, one wallet and one loyalty scheme should work simultaneously at the canteen, the kiosk, the e-commerce channel and the fridge.

When employee benefits, payments, and communication are all available through one touchpoint, operators unlock consistency and build trust. It becomes easy to reward late-night teams with free meals, prompt healthier choices or run targeted offers across all touchpoints.

The fridge becomes not just a new channel, but a connected channel, part of a seamless ecosystem rather than a standalone machine.

What will not change

Even as unattended formats grow, Tim believes two constants hold:

• Human craft in the kitchen, producing food worth coming in for.
• Human connection in the restaurant, the social core of the office.

Fridges augment that experience. Technology ties it together. And a unified interface gives guests the clarity and continuity they expect.

Five themes shaping the future

Hybrid-ready service
Food available 24/7, matching flexible schedules.

Connected points of purchase
One app, one wallet, one loyalty scheme across canteen, kiosk and fridge.

Waste-smart operations
Item-level tracking and dynamic pricing that cut waste and increase sell-through.

New market reach
Central kitchens plus distributed fridges unlock smaller and remote offices.

Frictionless experiences
Instant checkout, badge access and digital communication that guide the guest journey.

When the hardware is smart, the processes are clear and the experience is unified through Pej, contract catering becomes exactly what today’s workplaces need: flexible, accessible and delightfully simple.