Midcounties Co-operative has announced that it will boost the food waste reduction efforts across its estate by extending its partnership with Retail Insight, a provider of store operations execution software.
The operator of more than 230 grocery outlets noted that it is dedicated to minimising its environmental impact, as evidenced by its waste reduction initiatives. The society partnered with Retail Insight in 2019 in a bid to tackle food waste via its cloud-based software solution, WasteInsight.
WasteInsight is claimed to put retailers in control of food waste through data-led, actionable insights that support businesses’ entire waste journeys. Enabling dynamic price markdowns, it also addresses expiration management and drives improved forecasting accuracy. This is said to allow retailers to sell more while wasting less. By applying dynamic price markdowns, Midcounties Co-operative claims that it has been able to optimise pricing for near-expiry goods to maximise sell-through, protect margins and significantly minimise food waste.
Having already leveraged WasteInsight to reduce controllable food waste across its operations, the society is now looking for further waste reductions via the rollout ‘Prompted Markdown’, one of the latest features within the WasteInsight solution.
Prompted Markdown uses AI to automatically identify products nearing expiry, alerting staff members and pinpointing products where action is needed. Streamlining the markdown process and stock exit procedures, Prompted Markdown is claimed to eliminate the need for time-consuming manual checks, improving in-store teams’ productivity and freeing them to serve customers.
Jordan Clement, Head of Supply Chain at Midcounties Co-op, commented: “As a Co-operative, sustainability is at the heart of what we do. Working with Retail Insight, we’re excited to be innovative around waste reduction by exploring new opportunities in technology. We believe this development will not only help us reduce the amount of food going to landfill, but will also give our colleagues more time to do the things they would rather be doing; spending time engaging with and serving our customers and members.”
Jessica Westwell, Client Manager at Retail Insight, added: “We are delighted to be partnering with Your Co-op on our Prompted Markdown solution to improve expiration date management processes and to gain labour efficiencies and process compliance. This is an exciting new stage for them and continues to build on the benefits already seen from our Dynamic Markdown solution.”
NAM Implications:
- Consumer misgivings, even guilt, at having to bin uneaten food…
- …is surely sufficiently strong that a direct appeal to save wastage via a Dynamic Markdown solution would have more impact than references to ‘minimising environmental impact’.
- The savvy consumer has undergone fundamental changes in priorities since Lockdown…
- …and businesses had best reflect this reality in their strategies.
