Carrefour City Grootaers • France
How did Carrefour City Grootaers doubled its food shrinkage repurposing rate in 6 months?
Store surface area : 375 m2
Solutions : Smartdecision • Smartdiscount
Carrefour City Grootaers, a 375 m2 grocery store, is located in Nantes in the Pays de la Loire region. This neighbourhood market is located in the city centre and offers customers a range of services, including curbside pick-up on foot or by car and home delivery.
Although smaller stores generate less food waste than larger ones, the problem still exists. That’s why Nicolas Mermet, franchisee of the Carrefour City Grootaers store, chose Smartway’s solution to minimise loss from expired products.
“In our neighbourhood format, it’s just as important to repurpose our items and take action across the board.”
Nicolas Mermet,
Carrefour City Grootaers Franchisee
Specific waste reduction goals
Carrefour City Grootaers began working with Smartway in October 2021, with clear goals for the repurposing process, namely to save time dealing with short life products while also reducing waste. Smartway’s retail experts guaranteed that sales of short-dated products would be optimized while fully complying with French anti-waste regulations.
Since the beginning of the partnership with Smartway, Carrefour City Grootaers has received ongoing support from a Customer Success Manager, an anti-waste coach who works with store staff. This expedites the training and set-up process in stores. Smartway also provides the store with tools to track sales of marked-down products.
Simple solutions to automate date management
Before using the Food Waste Management System solutions, store staff checked expiration dates manually. The employee in charge of the fresh food department had to identify short life products each week and label them with markdown stickers by hand. Not only was this an inefficient and non-secure solution (the stickers just said 20% or 50% markdown, so the cashier had to figure out what price to charge), but it was also extremely time-consuming.
In order to save time when labelling short life products, Carrefour City Grootaers uses Smartdiscount, an intelligent and secure labelling solution. Just by scanning the barcode of the item in question, Smartdiscount prints an anti-waste discount label with the name of the item, a new barcode to be scanned at check-out, the old and new prices and the discount rate applied. Thus, the entire labelling and check-out process is automated thanks to our simple solution.
“Smartway solutions are fast and easy to use, making them highly optimized tools in the fight against food waste”
Nicolas Mermet,
Carrefour City Grootaers Franchisee
Smartdecision, automated markdowns for better sales
With Smartdecision, based on Artificial Intelligence, the store’s resale rate is guaranteed. The discount rate for each item is calculated automatically based on various factors, including the number of products to be labelled. This is a win-win solution. The store avoids throwing items away while getting the best return on its products, and consumers can by products that are still good at a lower price.
The tracking system is also much more effective. Smartdiscount identifies the specific items and families, unlike other systems, which just indicated “Miscellaneous”. The food shrinkage analysis reports therefore provide valuable data on losses and sales by product family. Within a few months, the store was able to cut its losses in half!
Staff describe the anti-waste labels as “more professional”. They are more attractive and eye-catching, which leads to better sales. Carrefour City Grootaers generates more than €1,000 in revenue (from sales of short-dated products labelled with Smartway) per month!
Solutions that can be tailored to any size store, easily and quickly
Smartway solutions can be tailored to all store sizes and grocery chains. It took staff just 2 days to set up the system! In addition, the store receives ongoing support in how to use the solution most effectively, to be sure not to throw anything away.
Ever since the Smartway solutions were implemented, the employees are proud of throwing away less. And rightly so: in just a few months, no less than 13,500 products have been marked down and sold in the store! Considering that this represents an average of 12,800 meals saved from landfills, the results are in line with the store’s goals. If these products had been thrown away, 16 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions would have been generated unnecessarily. Congratulations!
In just 6 months, no less than 13,500 products have been marked down and sold in the store!