Lund Food Holdings, Inc. and Pensa Systems announced a partnership to deploy Pensa’s automated retail shelf intelligence solution in every Lunds & Byerlys grocery store.
Using patented computer vision and artificial intelligence to scan all products and categories across all stores, Pensa will provide Lunds & Byerlys with almost instantaneous access to actual shelf inventory conditions, enabling the company to improve sales, optimize labor and deliver against its commitment to give customers the best shopping experience possible.
Profitable growth has never been more challenging for retailers, who today are facing unprecedented competition, worker shortages, supply chain disruptions, evolving consumer preferences and new, omnichannel fulfillment models. Stockouts on retail store shelves have been a profit-depleting bane to the industry for decades, costing retailers and brands an estimated $2.2T every year. Comprehensive scanning of all Lunds & Byerlys store shelves will provide the company with near real-time access to out-of-stock metrics that will enable:
- An improved omnichannel experience that reduces product substitutions based on a more accurate e-commerce catalog
- Worker efficiencies through more effective omnichannel product picking and faster, more accurate inventory gap scanning
- Improved in-stock levels to increase sales and customer satisfaction
“For more than three generations, we’ve been committed to exceptionally high standards in everything we do – extraordinary food, passionate employees with expertise, and ultimately, an exceptional customer experience,” said Curtis Funk, Senior Vice President of Merchandising at Lunds & Byerlys. “We’re excited to deploy Pensa’s innovative shelf intelligence solution throughout our stores so that we can ensure that when our customers walk down our aisles, the products they love are on the shelf.”
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Interaction of apps, scanners and shelves
Lunds & Byerlys store staff will scan every store shelf and product category using Pensa’s app on Zebra devices. Pensa’s patented AI will then capture and automatically analyze video streams of hundreds of individual product images to flag stockouts, optimize item availability and improve demand forecasting and omnichannel delivery. Staff can scan a single aisle in seconds, while Pensa delivers its analysis in near real-time. The company’s non-intrusive and highly scalable solution requires no infrastructure or hardware, providing Lunds & Byerlys with a powerful, state-of-the-art alternative to highly-inaccurate, cumbersome and time-consuming legacy approaches that attempt to estimate shelf inventory based on a combination of back-room inventory and point of sale data. Pensa’s data and intelligence will be Lunds & Byerlys’ system of record for shelf KPIs moving forward.
CPG brands that sell their products at Lunds & Byerlys stores will also benefit from the near real-time access to the out-of-stock and share-of-shelf metrics generated by Pensa’s solution, which can help brands:
- Optimize planogram compliance
- Improve merchandising effectiveness
- More accurately forecast demand and sales
- Rationalize product categories and portfolios
- Get new items on the shelf faster
“We’re very excited to partner with Lunds & Byerlys, a premier grocery brand, to provide a highly accurate and near-real time view of what’s actually on store shelves, right now,” said Richard Schwartz, president and CEO of Pensa Systems. “With Pensa, both brands and retailers can take a constant pulse, at scale, of store shelf and retail channel performance, bringing the physical store shelf online for the next age of retail.”
