Donut miss this excellent news round up: Last week’s biggest retail technology plays at a glance
RTIH rounds up the stand out retail systems deals, launches, deployments and pilots from the past seven days. Featuring Sweatcoin, Krispy Kreme, Wakefern Food Corp., Zippin, Żabka Group, Panda Express, and PriceSmart.
Sweatcoin
Sweatcoin has partnered with MoEngage to enhance customer engagement.
Sweatcoin counts users’ daily steps and rewards them with ‘sweatcoins’, its in-app currency, which can be built up to spend on products (in the same way consumers can collect and redeem air miles), donate to charity or exchange for cryptocurrency tender.
Looking to expand its offer to new international markets, including South America, India, Asia and Africa, it wanted to double down on its lifecycle marketing processes.
Previously, email and push notifications were being manually configured in its legacy system, which not only proved a time intensive exercise involving multiple members of the development, design and marketing teams but was delivering underwhelming results.
Sweatcoin chose to partner with MoEngage, and will leverage the solution’s customer engagement platform that uses artificial intelligence to unlock insight into consumers’ behaviours.
Krispy Kreme
Krispy Kreme is launching SADvert, a light emitting billboard designed to help boost the moods of Brits this month.
Created by PR & social agency Good Relations with support from VCCP Media, Open Outdoor and Clear Channel UK, it has been developed in response to research from Krispy Kreme which reveals that one in five Brits admit to getting no more than 15 minutes of sunshine each day during the month of January.
The 3D billboard, which has been constructed in Salford, features giant decorative doughnuts with SAD lamps inside from the brand’s new 195 calorie range and has been created to launch Krispy Kreme’s creative platform, Joy Unboxed.
It dispenses light therapy to passers by at the touch of a button.
Wakefern Food Corp.
Wakefern Food Corp. has opened The Pantry, a checkout-free convenience store for the workers at its Edison, New Jersey campus that features Trigo technology.
This uses computer vision with a series of cameras and shelf sensors to identify products picked up by people.
Wakefern is the first US company to test Trigo's technology, which has been deployed by several retailers in Europe and the UK, including REWE and Tesco.
Żabka Group
Żabka Group was last week out in force at NRF 2023 in New York.
Żabka Nano, an autonomous store concept that has been developed under the umbrella of Żabka Future for over a year and a half, was featured at the Microsoft booth.
“Participation in this prestigious event is not only an opportunity for us to establish new partnerships but also an opportunity to present Żabka as one of the world’s most innovative companies in the retail industry.,” said Tomasz Blicharski, EVP, Managing Director of Żabka Future.
“Warsaw, thanks to our concept, has become the world capital of autonomous stores, so I am glad that we have the opportunity to present this project to a global audience.”
“We want to show how our new technologies, created in cooperation with our partners, make life easier and free up our customers' time.”
Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) Netherlands
SymphonyAI Retail CPG has been selected by Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) Netherlands for data driven assortment optimisation capabilities to better avoid out-of-stocks and overstocks.
Pick n Pay Group
South African retailer Pick n Pay Group is to implement Blue Yonder’s SaaS-based category management solution for its grocery business, and allocation and assortment management solutions for its clothing business.
The Pick n Pay Group is a multi-format and multi-channel retailer with a portfolio of over 2,000 stores located throughout Africa, operating on an owned and franchise basis.
The company operates Pick n Pay supermarkets, Boxer and Pick n Pay Clothing, as well as being part owner of TM Supermarkets.
It also has a significant omnichannel presence and is looking to accelerate growth in key strategic areas, including delivering a refined customer value proposition.
To support this initiative, Pick n Pay needs to upgrade its capabilities from manual processes so it turned to its current supply chain solutions provider Blue Yonder.
SeeChange and Diebold Nixdorf
SeeChange Technologies has announced a five-year partnership with Diebold Nixdorf which kicks off with the launch of the first in a series of AI powered self-checkout (SCO) solutions.
UK-based SeeChange was founded in 2018 as a subsidiary of Arm, becoming independent in 2021 with seed funding investment from London-based Crane Venture Partners.
Diebold Nixdorf’s Vynamic Smart Vision uses the firm’s machine learning to recognise fruits, vegetables, baked goods and items without a barcode.
Farmison & Co
Farmison & Co, an online meat retailer, has unveiled a new traceability system that enables customers to use their smartphones to see where their whole cuts come from – right down to videos of the pastures where the cattle graze.
As part of its Farming the Future (FTF) programme, using a QR code on the packaging, with a link to the Farmison & Co website, customers can trace the origins of their meat, including the breed, videography of the farm where it was reared and the food miles.
Ottonomy.IO
Last week, Ottonomy.IO exhibited the Ottobot Yeti, pitched as the first autonomous delivery robot capable of unattended deliveries, at NRF 2023 in New York.
This includes an automated sliding delivery hatch that opens to deliver items without the need for human assistance.
PriceSmart
PriceSmart has become the first retailer in Latin America to adopt the ELERATM Commerce Platform from Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions as the international membership warehouse club looks to transform the front-end experience for its members.
Zippin
Zippin has launched Zippin Walk-Up which allows food and beverage counters to turn into checkout-free locations without changing the equipment already in place.
The company says that minimal construction is required, and existing stands can be converted in just days.
An all inclusive monthly subscription starts at under $4,000 with no upfront CapEx.
Panda Express
US-based restaurant chain Panda Express is providing its 50,000 associates with WorkJam’s digital workplace tools.
Employees across more than 2,200 US locations will be able to access all of WorkJam’s tools including two-way communication, scheduling, learning and task management capabilities in a single app.
L’Oréal Australia & New Zealand
L’Oréal Australia & New Zealand (ANZ) has selected the Productsup P2C platform to deliver rich, relevant, and accurate product information to consumers.
H-E-B
Supply chain consultant and former Amazon executive, Brittain Ladd, has provided a first look at an AutoStore micro fulfilment centre (MFC) installed in a H-E-B store in Plano, Texas, USA.
In a LinkedIn post, Ladd said: “I can state with no hesitation that the installed MFC is the most incredible AutoStore MFC I've ever seen.”
“H-E-B can legitimately claim to operate the most sophisticated and advanced grocery store in the world. Carrefour, Tesco, Majid Al Futtaim, Hy-Vee., and Amazon, need to pay close attention to what HEB is doing; especially Hy-Vee and Amazon.”
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