CASE STUDY
Noodles & Company
Pioneer of Fast Casual Restaurants Chooses AirTight
for its Company-wide Wi-Fi and WIPS Rollout
AirTight’s cloud-managed “3-in-1” solution brings dramatic cost-savings and
reduction in IT support load.
For almost two decades, Noodles &
Company has been catering to its hungry
customers with flavors from around the
world – made quickly, yet served fresh and
with style. Its classic dishes tailored for every
palate include a variety of noodles and
pasta – from Penne Rosa and Japanese Pan
Noodles to Wisconsin Mac & cheese, and an
array of soups, sandwiches and salads too.
Driven by the goal to provide its customers
with a relaxing and pleasurable dining
experience, Noodles & Company wanted to
offer complimentary guest Wi-Fi access in its
restaurants.
Search for a Cost Effective and
Easy-to-Manage Solution
Noodles & Company initially deployed a
managed Wi-Fi service from another vendor,
but given the cost associated with that
solution, company-wide deployment of
Guest Wi-Fi was not feasible. And even after
paying a high price, the solution didn’t offer
the wireless monitoring and protection
to truly comply with the wireless security
requirements of the PCI DSS.
That’s when Corey Kline, the IT Director of
Noodles & Company, started looking for an
alternative solution. “Given the small size
of the team providing tier-1 IT support to
almost 300 restaurants, the Wi-Fi solution
had to be very stable and not generate
unnecessary support calls,” explained Kline.
Strong security and PCI compliance was
also a top priority. “Previously we were
relying on some compensating controls
to comply with the PCI wireless security
requirements,” he added. “But given the
high standards of diligence and security we
set ourselves internally, we wanted to do a
thorough job with PCI compliance across all
our locations. So having a strong wireless
intrusion detection and prevention (WIPS)
functionality built into the Wi-Fi solution
was incumbent.”
Corey’s team looked at various enterprise
Wi-Fi solutions before choosing AirTight.
“We looked at a bunch of solutions. I was
blown away by the price point, features and
functionality we were going to get with
AirTight,” he said. “Other solutions didn’t
have all the functionalities; they did a part
C O M PA N Y O V E R V I E W
A chain of over 300 fast casual restaurants
across the US specializing in healthy, fresh
and flavorful food from around the world
served conveniently fast. The company is
headquartered in Broomfield, CO.
CHALLENGES
Reliable Wi-Fi access combined with
thorough and automated wireless
monitoring and security for PCI compliance
were the incumbent needs. The solution
had to simplify centralized management
of distributed locations and provide the
flexibility to expand Wi-Fi access to more
stores or to support more applications in the
future in a cost-effective manner.
of what we were going to address with
AirTight, but at a higher cost.”
One Solution. Many Answers.
Noodles & Company subscribed to AirTight
Cloud Services™ – a cloud managed
3-in-1 solution providing Wi-Fi access,
WIPS protection, and PCI compliance
reporting. Opting for a full Opex payment
model that’s a monthly subscription paid
annually, Noodles & Company was able
to significantly lower the total cost of
ownership and did not have to make any
upfront investment for purchasing the
hardware.
Implemented as a controller-less, ‘intelligent
edge’ architecture, the AirTight solution
eliminates the cost and complexity of the
traditional controller-based architecture.
AirTight APs can provide high-speed
802.11n access, while monitoring for
presence of unauthorized Wi-Fi devices
and protecting the network from wireless
threats such as Rogue APs, thus fulfilling the
PCI DSS wireless security requirements. This
enabled Noodles & Company to provide
Guest Wi-Fi access in its restaurants without
compromising security.
“We looked at a bunch of solutions. I was blown away by the price point, features and
functionality we were going to get with AirTight. Other solutions didn’t have all the
functionalities; they did a part of what we were going to address with AirTight, but at
a higher cost.”
SOLUTION
AirTight Cloud Services™, which combine
AirTight Wi-Fi™ for access with wireless
intrusion prevention (WIPS) and PCI
compliance scanning and reporting.
BENEFITS
• Significant cost savings
• Reliable Wi-Fi performance
• Easy to manage hundreds of sites with
scarce IT staff
• Integrated WIPS capability simplified PCI
compliance
CASE STUDY
Noodles & Company
AirTight APs also have a full-feature firewall
built-in that allows segmentation and
isolation of Guest Wi-Fi traffic from private
internal networks that are part of the
cardholder data environment (CDE), further
simplifying PCI compliance. Integrated traffic
shaping and QoS provide granular control on
applications and bandwidth usage per SSID.
Reliable Performance
Despite being installed all the way to the
back of the restaurant, right next to the
manager’s desk, AirTight APs provide good
coverage throughout the facility. “Even with
the internal antennas, the signal coverage
is great throughout the restaurant, all the
way from across the manager’s desk through
the kitchen all the way to the front parking
lot. And we always have the option to add
external antennas on the same AP if the need
arises,” said Corey Kline.
Easy to Deploy and Manage
AirTight APs can be powered over the IEEE
802.3af Power over Ethernet (PoE) standard.
Once they have Internet access, AirTight APs
automatically discover and securely connect
to the AirTight Cloud over an AES-enrypted
tunnel. As soon as they connect to the cloud
server, they become visible as icons on the
Web-based management console.
A unique feature that makes the AirTight
solution ideal for enterprises like Noodles &
Company with hundreds or even thousands
of geographically distributed locations
is AirTight’s patented location-based
management architecture. IT administrators
can map the entire deployment visually in a
hierarchical location tree and push consistent
policies such as SSID configurations, radio
properties, wireless intrusion detection and
prevention settings, etc. across all sites.
“It’s just so easy!” exclaimed Corey Kline. “We
spent less than half a day configuring the
system. As soon as a new AirTight device was
plugged in any of our locations, it showed up
on the management console.
All we had to do is drag and drop the device
icon into the appropriate location folder.
And, in a matter of minutes, the device had
downloaded the configuration – enabling
both the Wi-Fi network and WIPS protection.”
The ability to define multiple configuration
templates and apply a particular template
to one or more locations from the central
console presented Corey and his team with
the much-wanted flexibility.
This also gives businesses like Noodles &
Company the flexibility to securely expand
more Wi-Fi networks (SSIDs) on existing
AirTight APs to support new applications in
the future.
Corey Kline explained, “The flexibility to
securely expand the Wi-Fi presence in
restaurants was a requirement. While today
our focus is on providing Guest Wi-Fi access
in the restaurants, in the future, we might
consider running other applications such as
mobile PoS terminals over a secure corporate
Wi-Fi network. If that need arises,
I wanted us to be in a position where we can
say Yes!”
From Restaurants to Corporate
Headquarters
Based on the success with the first phase of
the deployment of AirTight Cloud Services,
Noodles & Company is planning to rollout
AirTight Wi-Fi across all its new restaurants
opening in 2013 as well as in its corporate
headquarters. All locations will be centrally
managed from the AirTight Cloud.
While Noodles & Company has already
rolled out AirTight devices to almost 270
restaurants, not all are providing Wi-Fi
access. The default configuration is to
run the AirTight devices as a WIPS sensor
monitoring the wireless airspace 24/7. And
on demand, the IT team can apply a different
configuration template to convert the
selected restaurants from ‘No Wi-Fi’ locations
into those offering Guest Wi-Fi access, in a
matter of minutes.
CUSTOMER QUOTES
“I’m a fan of a situation where I don’t
like to negotiate with a vendor over and
over. Our process with AirTight was very
straightforward and quick. We did not have
to negotiate and I was extremely happy with
the features and functionality of AirTight at
that price point. It was a win-win situation.”
“Even with the internal antennas, the signal
coverage is great throughout the restaurant,
all the way from across the manager’s desk
through the kitchen all the way to the front
parking lot.”
Comprehensive Cloud-Managed Wi-Fi
AirTight Networks, Inc. 339 N. Bernardo Avenue #200, Mountain View, CA 94043
T +1.877.424.7844 T 650.961.1111 F 650.961.1169 www.airtightnetworks.com [email protected]
Case Study: Noodels & Company [Doc ID: ATN-CS-1113-004-00-EN]
© 2013 - 2015 AirTight Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. AirTight Networks and the AirTight Networks logo are
– Corey Kline, Director of IT, Noodles &
Company
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