@flyingpenguin I think the article quite clearly explains the reasons that these fridges are online:

"Logistics companies are often required to demonstrate that food has stayed within a narrow temperature range while in their custody; the ability for a freezer to broadcast an alert if its temperature deviates from a set point at 2 a.m. is an extremely useful feature. Refrigeration units are always on—they have to run 24/7 by design—and a lot of today’s smartest devices provide the diagnostics that allow companies to perform predictive maintenance to preempt any potential issues. “The risk of loss is so high if the unit goes down,” Chris Gaffney, a supply-chain expert at Georgia Tech who previously ran logistics for Coca-Cola, told me.

The food that our fridges are protecting is extremely fragile; the machines themselves are quite complex; and qualified technicians are in short supply. A refrigerated warehouse, let alone a supermarket, won’t have a person with that kind of specialist skill set on-site, Gaffney said. But when connected to the internet, a scattered portfolio of freezers can be managed and sometimes even fixed remotely. And, as politicians push legislation to make food traceable, the entire supply chain is being digitized. “There are a lot of positives that come with that—ways to increase our food security and understanding where food is coming from,” Sara Stickler, the president of the Global Cold Chain Alliance, an industry trade group, told me. “But with digitization, there also comes risks.”