Southern Co-op has accelerated progress towards its sustainability goals by leveraging WasteInsight from Retail Insight, the leading provider of in-store execution software, to reduce food waste while optimising sell-through and margin.
Founded over 150 years ago, Southern Co-op is a regional co-operative with 195 stores in the South of England. With a long-standing commitment to sustainability and community support, it is looking to build a ‘waste-free future’ by reducing the environmental impact of its operations. Working towards its ‘waste-free’ goal, the retailer identified the need to optimise markdown processes to cut the volume of food going to landfill while also improving sell-through rates (STRs) on reduced to clear (RTC) produce.
Southern Co-op was already implementing markdowns on fresh and ambient goods to reduce food waste from its store estate. However, this relied on traditional fixed-price markdowns based on time of day, which did not account for factors like volume, weather, or intra-day sales profiles. Whilst this was a well-established process, it resulted in imbalances in STRs of short-life, RTC items, which in turn impacted customer availability, waste levels, and profitability.
Wanting to optimise these processes, Southern Co-op implemented Retail Insight’s data-driven food waste reduction solution, WasteInsight, harnessing the power of the solution’s dynamic markdown feature. The product uses advanced, cognitive-driven technology to analyse a wide range of data points – from product type to seasonality – enabling grocers to calculate a product’s optimal discount price and markdown time to reduce waste while maximising STRs and minimising loss.
By standardising and automating markdown processes, the solution now gives Southern Co-op more visibility into the impact of markdown decisions, allowing it to analyse and optimise markdowns. It also meant Southern Co-op could track store compliance, ensuring markdowns were being carried out on time and to the correct price, which would improve STR while protecting margin.
Last year, through its use of WasteInsight, Southern Co-op saved ~3.1 million meals from being wasted, an increase of +16% year-on-year. This had a significant impact on emissions reductions, preventing ~3,083 tonnes of food from entering landfill – the same weight as 257 double-decker buses – rising by +426 tonnes compared to the year before. This stopped ~8,323 tonnes of Co2e from being emitted.
Simon Eastwood, Chief Operation Officer of Food Retail at Southern Co-op, commented: “The markdown process is far more transparent and proactive than it was before. Retail Insight’s solution enables us to steer our markdown strategy toward a more optimised way of working, with clear goals and improved visibility into outcomes. In-store teams have found it easy and we now have much better visibility of how our store teams are complying with the markdown values and timings, which we did not previously have.”
Kieran O’Brien, VP Customer Success EMEA at Retail Insight, commented: “It’s great to see the strides that Southern Co-op is creating on their path to their waste-free future. With optimised markdowns, Southern Co-op not only reduces food wastage, stopping perfectly good food entering landfill, but it’s also able to sell more while delivering value to its customers.”
Looking ahead, Southern Co-op plans to launch several trials using the solution, including a markdown timing trial to ensure the retailer receives the best markdown window from an operational and performance perspective. Southern Co-op also plans to conduct several algorithm test pilots to further enhance the system and drive performance.
