East of England Co-op moves closer to its zero food waste goal

The East of England Co-op has moved closer to its goal of eliminating edible food waste by 2030 by working with Retail Insight.

Last year, tech company Retail Insight’s AI-powered markdown solution helped the cooperative to prevent 1.8m meals from entering landfill using its expiry date management feature.

Retail Insight’s Prompted Markdowns feature automates the identification of products nearing expiry, alerting staff members to focus only on products where action is needed. Streamlining the markdown process and stock exit procedures, It eliminates the need for time-consuming manual checks, improving the in-store teams’ productivity – a key area East of England Co-op sought to address.

Alongside the operational changes, Retail Insight worked with the retailer to on its electronic shelf labels (ESLs), which are supplied by Pricer. The integration triggers the ESLs to flash so that colleagues can more easily locate the appropriate product on the shelf to mark down, further boosting labour productivity.

Now live in all of East of England Co-op’s ESL-equipped stores, the move equates to approximately 4,880 Co2e prevented from being emitted - enough energy to power 5,810 UK homes a year.

Sam Winter, chief retail officer at East of England Co-op, said: “We want to use technology to improve the lives of our colleagues, customers, members and the community. Retail Insight’s WasteInsight solution is a great example of exactly how we can do that. We listened to feedback and reduced manual effort and frustration for colleagues in-store, ensuring we can give great deals to our customers, and importantly put the society on a trajectory to meet our target to reduce food waste to 0% by 2030.”