Making a Difference: How Grocery Retailers Can Reduce Food Waste With Technology

Making a Difference: How Grocery Retailers Can Reduce Food Waste With Technology

By Andrew Dark, Displaydata

Reducing food waste is a global concern, especially in the grocery industry. On a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis, grocery retailers worldwide struggle with how best to control and minimize the amount of food waste coming from their stores. They are consistently plagued with huge write-offs on fruits, vegetables and other fresh produce.

In the U.S., the USDA and EPA have made huge strides in eliminating food waste, calling for a 50% reduction in food waste by 2030. The United States federal government says it will work with charitable and faith-based organizations, private sector and local, state and tribal governments to reduce the 133 billion pounds of food wasted each year. One of the U.K.’s largest grocers recently announced it will begin donating leftover food from its stores to charity with the hope to eradicate all food waste from the organization by the end of 2017.

In recent years, however, grocery retailers have also taken initial steps through the use of technology to shore up their food wastage problem. One tool, dynamic pricing, is being implemented by some grocers to strategically price perishable items throughout the day, encouraging shoppers to purchase those items before they spoil.

In our experience, we’ve found retailers that decrease pricing by just 1% throughout the day see an increase in sales of 2.62% on average. To further reduce environmental impact, retailers are implementing digital signage to display the pricing changes instead of traditional paper tags, allowing them to instantly change prices – one of the keys to dynamic pricing. In all, this approach gives grocery retailers an innovative way to quickly communicate price changes to their shoppers and improve sales and margins.

There are other innovations, too, in the war against food waste. Zero-waste grocery stores are popping up across the country, allowing customers to bring in their own reusable containers to measure out and purchase just the right amount of food items and other household products. The goal of these stores is to decrease the amount of both unused food and unnecessary packaging. As well, there are apps available that connect neighbors and local businesses wanting to exchange or sell surplus edible food, fostering a “food sharing revolution”.

Without a doubt, we will continue to see new initiatives to eliminate food waste by the grocery industry, as well as those just looking to make a difference in the amount of food that is thrown away in households and businesses across the globe. For grocery retailers, reducing food waste is not only a way to boost the bottom line but also improve corporate social responsibility in a genuine, powerful way.