Weis Markets Keeps Shelves Fresh With AI

To enhance operations at nearly 200 stores, Weis Markets has partnered with Invafresh, a fresh intelligence platform for grocery retailers. 

Grocery is becoming a laboratory-slash-innovation-sandbox for next generation brands and businesses hoping to optimize their physical stores to better serve consumers through improved design, inventory, assortment, messaging, and fulfillment by leveraging automated and AI-supported processes and systems. 

Intelligently connected inventory, systems and infrastructure not only allow for a seamless and intuitive consumer experience, but also provide retailers with greater accuracy regarding demand forecasting. By incorporating cloud-based solutions into their organizations, retailers are better suited to collect and analyze collected data and leverage insights to better predict consumer demand.

Through the partnership with the Invafresh intelligence platform, Weis Markets wants to improve demand forecasting, in-store production planning, food traceability, recipe management and cut test management across all fresh departments and, therefore, upgrade its entire fresh food lifecycle. To give Weis Markets, and other retailers, great control over their fresh products and waste management, Invafresh leverages AI and machine learning capabilities. The technologies not only help retailers with fresh food management, but also reduce staff workload. 

Consumers are eating healthier and more intentionally, and as a result are increasingly demanding fresh food from grocers. Grocers have responded with greater availability of fresher produce and prepared foods. This trend helped drive an increase in sales during the pandemic, but increased costs. This increased demand along with labor shortages and competition has spurred food retailers to automate certain processes by implementing fresh-native technology.

Invafresh will help upgrade the Weis Markets’ entire fresh food and produce operations lifecycle, from purchase to prepared food production planning. The integration of the Invafresh platform will give Weis Markets visibility and quality control over stores to maximize freshness and deliver a consistent consumer experience. The Invafresh Fresh Retail Platform uses AI and machine learning to streamline fresh food operations and reduce waste, making in-store operations more efficient and helping to deliver an amazing experience for grocery shoppers.

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This article originally appeared in the PSFK iQ report, The Grocery Store Playbook.