Carrefour implements AI tool to combat food waste

Which of your products are approaching their expiration date? And what discount will they receive if they do? Keeping track of your food stocks can be a huge and time-consuming work, so Carrefour Belgium is adopting a new AI tool to do that for them.

Smart discounts

Every day, Carrefour has to discount more than 40,000 items in its 83 largest stores in Belgium alone, purely because they are approaching their expiration dates. As this is hugely costly in man-hours, the retailer was looking for a solution to efficiently manage expiration dates, optimise discounts and combat food waste.

After a successful trial period, Carrefour Belgium is now implementing its new AI tracking tool on a large scale. “The new tool will help us streamline operations, reduce costs and improve profitability”, its New Technology Manager Benoît Moreau explains. “Thanks to integrated intelligent discounting and full control over shelf stock, it will play a key role in our strategy to reduce waste and improve economic performance.”

Carrefour says it can monitor inventory levels in real time and predict demand fluctuations to reduce risks of over- or understocking. The data tool can also analyse consumer preferences, buying behaviour and inventory trends. The tool should also simplify employees’ daily workflows and ultimately save up to sixty minutes of work time per day per store.