Cookpad

Direct-from-farm delivery

Cookpad Mart is an e-commerce service that connects consumers with fresh ingredients from local farmers and specialty shops. Shoppers place orders through a mobile app, and their purchases are delivered to neighborhood “Mart Stations,” refrigerated lockers designed for same-day pickup. This keeps food fresh while making local produce more accessible.

Unlike traditional grocery delivery services, Cookpad Mart avoids central distribution centers that can degrade quality. By shipping directly from farm or shop to customer, they minimize handling and preserve freshness. This farm-to-fridge approach is a defining feature of their service and sets them apart in the crowded grocery marketplace.

To make this system work, Cookpad had to ensure that every order could be processed accurately from the moment it was placed to the moment it was delivered. That required not only a digital marketplace, but also reliable hardware that farmers and small shops could depend on day after day.

The Challenge: Ensuring label reliability

Cookpad began with a straightforward idea: equip farmers and specialty shops with label printers so they could mark orders clearly before handing them to drivers. In theory, this would streamline the handoff process and ensure that every product arrived with the correct details.

In practice, the system quickly showed its limits. Labels needed to be water-resistant, consistently formatted, and durable enough to survive handling in busy, sometimes outdoor environments. Without this, consumers could receive confusing or inconsistent information on their deliveries.

A first prototype combining a standard printer with an iPad seemed promising, but testing revealed frequent paper jams, device freezes, and unstable connections between devices. These setbacks made it clear that Cookpad needed a more stable, IoT-ready system to support its unique delivery model.

The Solution: IoT-enabled fulfillment

Cookpad partnered with Soracom to build a more resilient solution. By equipping a Raspberry Pi with Soracom Air cellular connectivity, Cookpad created a reliable communications hub that stabilized printer operations and enabled continuous status monitoring. This reduced common issues like jams and connection drops.

To securely transmit order data, Cookpad used Soracom Canal, which provided a private connection between IoT devices and their AWS-hosted backend. If problems were detected, the operations team could use Soracom Gate to access devices remotely, drastically cutting downtime and eliminating the need for on-site intervention.

Beyond solving the printing challenge, Cookpad extended the solution to food safety. By deploying Soracom Beacon sensors and visualizing their data through Soracom Harvest, Cookpad could monitor temperature, humidity, and location in real time, ensuring quality control from farm to Mart Station.

Why Soracom?

Soracom’s platform provided Cookpad with a unified foundation for rapid IoT development. With Soracom’s endpoint functions, Cookpad could link data from multiple services simultaneously, including direct integration with AWS through Soracom Funnel. This seamless interoperability allowed engineers to focus on refining customer and farmer experiences rather than managing infrastructure.

Development speed was another key advantage. Using Soracom, just two engineers (one focused on applications and the other on backend systems) were able to design, test, and deploy a fully functional IoT system in only a week. The efficiency of Soracom’s APIs and management tools made rapid prototyping possible.

For Cookpad, the decision to use Soracom wasn’t just about solving immediate technical hurdles. It provided a scalable, flexible platform that could support continuous innovation. With this foundation in place, Cookpad can evolve its service quickly and confidently as customer needs grow.

Scaling innovation

Cookpad continues to emphasize speed in its hardware development process, with prototypes often produced in as little as a week and rarely taking longer than a month. This allows the team to test, learn, and improve without slowing down day-to-day operations.

Future plans include making it even easier for farmers and specialty shops to participate in the Cookpad Mart ecosystem. By simplifying the hardware and further automating back-end processes, Cookpad hopes to reduce barriers for local producers who may not have prior technical experience.

As Cookpad scales its service into more regions, the company is committed to preserving the freshness and quality that have defined its success. With Soracom as its IoT backbone, Cookpad can expand while maintaining the trust and reliability that keep customers coming back.