Thanks to Retail Insight's AI-powered markdown solution, East of England Co-op prevented a remarkable 1.8 million meals from going to waste last year, marking a significant step towards their 2030 ambition of zero edible food waste.
Established over 150 years ago, East of England Co-op is now the largest independent retailer operating in the region, with over 120 food stores. To ensure continued innovation across its estate, the co-operative worked with Retail Insight, a leading provider of in-store execution software, to deploy their expiry date management feature.
Prompted Markdowns is a part of Retail Insight’s WasteInsight solution and was deployed to all of East of England Co-op's food stores in September 2024.
Prompted Markdowns 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, Prompted Markdowns 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.
The implementation of Prompted Markdowns also aligned with the retailer’s goals to simplify their reduced to clear (RTC) processes, reduce operational costs, and reduce food waste.
Alongside the operational changes, Retail Insight worked with the retailer to develop an integration between its solution and the electronic shelf labels (ESLs) supplied by Pricer that East of England uses. 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 food stores, the solution prevented 1.8 million meals from entering landfill in 2024. It also improved sell through rates (STR) by 13 per cent, helping East of England Co-op sell 6.9 million items that would have otherwise been wasted, including 1.9 million units of fruit and vegetables.
“We want to use technology to improve the lives of our colleagues, our customers, our members and the community. Retail Insight’s WasteInsight solution is a great example of exactly how we can do that,” Sam Winter, Chief Retail officer at East of England Co-op, said.
“We listened to feedback and have reduced manual effort and frustration for colleagues in-store, ensuring we can give great deals on RTC products to our customers, and importantly put the society on a trajectory to meet our target to reduce food waste to zero per cent by 2030.”
Kieran O’Brien, VP customer success EMEA at Retail Insight, commented: “The ESL integrations we’ve delivered for East of England Co-op have drastically reduced the amount of time store associates spend on RTC markdowns. And, because our platform leverages foundational retail data, major operational changes could be implemented without the need for significant CapEx or store disruption and scaled quickly to accelerate ROI.”
