Albertsons Cos. Continues Fight Against Food Waste

Albertsons Cos. has partnered with Afresh Technologies to use its AI-powered predictive ordering and inventory solutions in an effort to reduce waste and offer the freshest product for customers, the company said. Afresh will help to optimize fresh forecasting, inventory, ordering, merchandising and operations for the Boise, Idaho-based grocer.

“By partnering with Afresh, we are now able to improve our processes to better manage our fresh product supply and provide our store teams with a tool to better predict demand and monitor inventory,” said Susan Morris, Albertsons EVP and COO, in a statement. “Managing these variables ultimately allows us to offer our customers even higher quality fresh products and further reduce our food waste.”  

In an interview with WGB earlier this month, Afresh CEO Matt Schwartz discussed how the four-year-old tech company offers an ordering optimization system specifically built for fresh that he believes gives grocers a competitive edge. “Strategically, fresh is the thing that differentiates a grocer from the online competitor like Amazon or even from other brick-and-mortar competitors,” Schwartz told WGB.

Afresh enables Albertsons to deploy a state-of-the-art AI technology platform in all its stores to further differentiate its fresh offering to customers while helping to reduce food waste, ultimately reducing greenhouse gas emissions and saving water, the San Francisco-based tech company said.

As one of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Loss and Waste Champions, Albertsons will be able to achieve, with innovative solutions such as Afresh, its goal to reduce food waste by 50% by 2030. Additionally, Albertsons is committed to setting a science-based carbon reduction goal, and food waste will help reduce the carbon footprint within the company’s value chain, says the company.

“We know that fresh food drives the global grocery industry, yet the lack of technology for fresh departments causes immense food waste and expensive losses. We're honored to support Albertsons Cos.’ investment in, and demonstrated velocity of, technology and innovation, which is making the grocery experience better and more efficient for both the retailer and its shoppers,” said Schwartz.