Walmart Freshens Up Produce Section With New Eden Technology

In an effort to keep track of produce freshness—and make that freshness visible to the shopper—Walmart has debuted its new Eden technology.

Developed over just six months in what Parvez Musani, VP of supply chain technology for Walmart, described in a blog post as a "friendly competition, or hackathon, among the engineers and fresh merchandising teams," the new technology aims to improve the quality and flow of fresh groceries from farm to shelf. The retailer has since filed two patents for the new system.

"Our goal was to figure out the best way to keep track of food freshness all the way from the farms to our stores," Musani wrote. "The winning team determined that building a digital library of food standards was the answer. So they gathered the many chapters of food product specifications set by the USDA, layered on Walmart’s own rigorous product standards, and combined all of this information with more than a million photos to create a freshness algorithm that prioritizes the flow of perishable goods worldwide."

According to Musani, Eden leverages sophisticated technology such as machine learning, but in a way that is simple enough for all associates to use. The suite of apps will allow these associates to better monitor and care for fresh produce that is waiting to be shipped from distribution centers, he says. 

"That could mean more efficiently ripening bananas, predicting the shelf life of tomatoes while they’re still on the vine, or prioritizing the flow of green grocery items from the back of the store to the shelf," he said. He gave bananas as an example, which he says are reliably one of the best-selling items in Walmart stores and travel from seven countries in Latin America to more than 4,000 stores in the U.S. 

"On such a long road, what happens to those bananas if temperatures in the container trucks exceed acceptable ranges?" he asked. "In the future, Eden will be able to recalculate the freshness factor and reroute the shipment immediately. The bananas end up in a closer store to optimize freshness, consumers take home a delicious bunch, and everyone is happy."

The Eden technology is also expected to help reduce food waste among Walmart stores. According to Musani, Eden is already being used in 43 distribution centers and has prevented $86 million in waste, working toward the retailer's goal of eliminating $2 billion in food waste over the next five years.