Heinen’s partners with Afresh to reduce food waste

Heinen’s, an upscale neighborhood grocery chain in the Cleveland and Northern Chicago areas, is teaming with Afresh, the artificial intelligence-powered fresh food optimization platform for grocers, to deploy the Afresh solution suite in fresh departments across the chain.

Heinen's will use Afresh across its 23 stores to reduce food waste, improve store profitability and make fresher, healthier food more accessible to its communities.

“Our customers know that they can always find the freshest, highest-quality foods and the greatest assortment at Heinen’s,” said Jeff Heinen, co-CEO of Heinen’s. “The partnership with Afresh enables us to continue to deliver on that promise of the freshest food and the best in-stock rate. We have always embraced innovation and are excited to partner with Afresh.”

Afresh’s A.I.-powered optimization platform is purpose-built for fresh departments and efficiently supports merchandising, ordering, and store operations solutions. Afresh helps grocers significantly reduce food waste, increase freshness, and accelerate stock turns, resulting in increased sales and profitability.

“Afresh enables us to profitably run the fresh department just as we envision it,” said Greg Sotka, director of category management and merchandising for Heinen’s. “Ever since we started working with Afresh, our teams have loved the experience, from the ease of use of the app to the accuracy of recommendations. Our product is fresher and more in-stock and we’ve significantly reduced shrink. All in all, Afresh has been an incredible partner to Heinen’s.”

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Founded in 1929 as a neighborhood butcher shop, Cleveland-based Heinen's, with four generations of family ownership, has a leading reputation for high-quality products across fresh departments. Heinen’s has grown to 23 total store locations with 19 stores in Cleveland and four stores in the suburbs of Chicago.

“Grocers like Heinen’s have an important, but wildly tough job: feed millions of mouths with slim operating budgets inside a brutally competitive industry. We started Afresh to help them succeed,” said Matt Schwartz, CEO of San Francisco-based Afresh. “Heinen’s is known for delighting its loyal customers and we are deeply honored to partner with them to help them be the best in fresh.”