Dive Brief:
- Festival Foods is using artificial intelligence forecasting and inventory management tools through a partnership with Upshop for its fresh foods operations, per an emailed announcement.
- The Wisconsin family- and employee-owned grocer is using the store operations technology maker’s Fresh SaaS software, which integrates and digitizes different workflows and data streams, like pricing, recipes and production plans to streamline ordering processes and production operations.
- The announcement notes that the partnership comes at a time when Festival Foods is getting ready to grow its business.
Dive Insight:
Festival Foods, which has 40 supermarkets across Wisconsin, is investing in building a “competitive edge” with its fresh department, and working with Upshop will help the grocery chain scale operational efficiencies, Ken Wicker, Festival Foods’ senior vice president of fresh foods, noted in the press release.
Upshop noted that automation can help with fresh perimeter’s operational complexities coupled with customers’ high expectations of fresh foods.
“This partnership is about removing barriers to execution for our teams and simplifying the complexities of running a Fresh department so [associates] can focus on delivering a memorable guest experience,” Festival Foods CEO and President Mark Skogen said in the announcement.
The partnership announcement marks the third recently unveiled retailer tie-up for Upshop.
Last month, Upshop announced its existing retail partner Cub Foods was in the process of rolling out its Expiration Date Management products to 55 Cub stores, giving workers targeted notifications and workflow guidance to rotate soon-to-expire items. That tie-up is expected to result in over $1.5 million in annual shrink savings, according to Upshop.
Cub has been using Upshop’s labeling and scales management, recipe and inventory management capabilities, along with traceability solutions, for more than a decade.
In May, Niemann Foods decided to implement Upshop’s automated replenishment and inventory optimization system, called Magic, across 43 stores in Illinois, Missouri and Indiana, per an announcement, which noted the tie-up “will lead to stores that are meeting localized demand and making it easier for associates to manage stocking.”
Upshop has positioned its tools as scalable options that can help retailers expand their businesses as grocers large and small turn to technology to automate processes, lessen friction points with customers and make it easier and faster for workers to do their jobs.
