Also as an e-grocery store usage has skyrocketed in our coronavirus-catalyzed world, traditional grocery stores have moved on. While strict in-store safety guidelines may gradually loosen, the shopping experience will still be modest and socially distanced for the foreseeable future.
This begs the question: With even greater challenges than the pre-pandemic, how can grocers ensure that their stores continue to operate profitably?
Just as micro-fulfillment centers (MFCs), obscure stores, and other fulfillment solutions have helped e-grocers optimize profitability, a variety of old and new technologies can help brick-and-mortar stores stay relevant and keep churning. money.
Today we are presenting three "things to do" for post-pandemic grocery stores: relying on data, relying on biology, and relying on hardware.
Trust the data
The hallmark of in-store shopping is the constant availability and wide selection of fresh items, often more than online. But as the number of in-store customers continues to fluctuate, inventory planning and minimizing waste have increasingly become a challenge for grocery store managers. Grocers on average throw away more than 12% of their shelf products, which consume already razor-thin margins.
While e-grocers are automating and optimizing their fulfillment operations, physical grocery stores can automate and streamline their inventory planning mechanisms. To do this, they must leverage their existing customer, business, and external data assets to gather valuable information for store managers.
Walmart's Eden Technologies is a pioneering example. Born from a corporate hackathon project, the internal tool has been rolled out to more than 43 distribution centers nationwide and promises to save Walmart over $ 2 billion over the next few years. For example, if a batch of products destined for a store hundreds of miles away is deemed ready to mature, the tool can instead help hijack it to the nearest store, using FDA standards and over 1 million images to guide its analysis.
Likewise, firms like Afresh Technologies and Shelf Engine have built platforms to leverage years of historical customer and sales data, as well as seasonality and other external factors, to help store managers determine how much and when to order. The results have been nothing but positive: Shelf Engine customers have increased gross margins by over 25% and Afresh customers have reduced food waste by up to 45%.