Blockchain for the supply chain of the Italian craft beer sector: tracking and discount coupons

Abstract

In the Italian craft beer market, many breweries and pubs propose a large number of products to beerlovers. In this highly fragmented market, it is hard for the beerlovers to assess the quality of a beer and it is hard for breweries and pubs to inform the beerlover of the quality of their offer. Supply chain tracking is an interesting tool to improve transparency of food markets. However, standard tracking approaches are challenging in highly fragmented contexts for several reasons. In this paper, we show how it is possible to realize a blockchain-based supply chain tracking tailored for the highly fragmented sector of the Italian craft beer. We collaborated with one of the players of that market to analyse the specific problems of that context and we report the results. We show a design that addresses those problems and might be generalized to support tracking in other highly fragmented sectors. We estimate costs and that turn out to be affordable for that sector. Finally, we discuss the adoption of the same blockchain infrastructure to provide a related blockchain-based discount coupon systems, we analyse the advantages of this approach, and we discuss some design aspects to deal with privacy regulation.