Swedish company Deligate is reimagining the grocery store with its Eat Soon program, shrinking food waste in the process.
Eat Soon allows shoppers to quickly identify food items that are close to their expiration date, providing them with discounts as a reward for buying food that's almost past its sell-by date. Shoppers scan short-dated food items at a station in a grocery store, which then applies higher discounts for products closer to expiring.
"Dynamic pricing is appealing to the customer, who can make real bargains at the station, but it's also beneficial for the store, avoiding setting too high discounts," said the company's CEO, Adam Vikström. "Eat Soon price goods just right."
The company's website claims that the service has helped stores double their sales of short-term items. Deligate says that Eat Soon boosts revenue by €1.24 or 31% per item. More importantly, the service chops the waste of short-term food items in half, as it drastically increases the amount of food that is sold instead of being thrown out by stores once it expires.
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"This is good food we are talking about," Vikstorm said, "and we need to treat it with respect if we truly want to accomplish the food waste changes we are aiming for."
Deligate also offers a Smart Date Tracker app that allows stores to keep track of best-before dates so they can organize items according to their expiration dates.
Food waste is an enormous problem around the world — in the United States alone, we throw away around 119 billion pounds of food every year, according to Feeding America. Composting apps and scrap maximization are all good ways of combating the food waste problem, and ensuring that customers connect with expiring foods from stores so that they aren't thrown away is another great way to decrease waste.
"The dynamic pricing and store exposure of the Eat Soon stations cut waste in half and increases the revenue per short-dated product by an average of 1.12 Euro," Vikström said. "We have the long-term sales and waste statistics to prove it."
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