Traxlo and Swedish sustainability tech company Whywaste are developing a joint solution for the retail sector that can reduce food waste by 30% by employing locals around the stores. Companies will enable local gig workers to efficiently track food expiry dates and prevent overstocking in the neighbourhood shops.
According to Ben Holden of Whywaste, the aim of both companies is to make sustainability profitable for retailers. Both startups are developing different software solutions that tackle different efficiency pain points on a shop floor.
“Having 7 years experience working with retail, we noticed that different tasks on the shop floor are huge drivers for food waste, they’re not environmentally friendly. Food waste is a massive problem and we see a definite collaboration potential between what “Traxlo” does, and what we at Whywaste do”, says Ben Holden of Whywaste.
Traxlo’ operates a retail grocery store tasks marketplace tasku.app, which task’ifies daily operations of the grocery stores: date checking, product stocking, planogram compliance, merchandising and many more. It is an outsourced service for the retail operator or FMCG product brand inside the retail store.
Startups are combining Whywaste’s date checking app with the Traxlo platform and related Tasku app, putting the date checking software into taskers’ mobile phones, bringing a whole new world of efficiency. It means that retailers get efficient task execution, improved date checking processes and reduced food waste with zero additional effort from the regular store staff side.
“Having highly motivated gig workers with new mobile app functionality will make a big impact and we’re gonna see a huge decrease in the amount of time taken to do these daily tasks. But also, most importantly, a reduction in food waste will be achieved. According to our calculations, in some cases to 30%”, adds Ben Holden of Whywaste.
“I totally agree. Our gig workers or as we call them taskers have to do these tasks routinely every day. And using Whywaste’s solution they do it thoroughly, it minimizes the chance of missing a soon to expire product. That is an important thing, especially for the big stores, where people work in a chaotic environment. Product expiry date checking is still too clumsy, the errors happen more often than it should do. Having our integrated solutions is a win-win-win situation – for the retailer, for the shop manager and for taskers”, says Paul Vezelis of Traxlo.
In addition, a great benefit for retail chains is having regular access to daily data, collected by taskers through mobile applications, pinpointing exactly which products are the highest drivers for food waste.
Data collected by gig workers inform when products are out of stock or being sold inefficiently. This data then informs the shop manager who can take action to reduce the shelf lifetime, purchasing budgets and food waste for inefficient products.
The next step will be holistic product shelf-life tracking, analytics and retail chain reporting. Increased retailer profits, reduced food waste, less stocking, and increased overall efficiency. These are the key benefits of our integrated platform”, says Ben Holden of Whywaste.
According to Paul Vezelis, dynamic pricing will open up additional benefits in the future, enabling shops to sell more of soon to expire products. Dynamic pricing is the way forward to be able to accurately discount a product at the optimum value it is going to sell, driving profitability.
Today food waste is a global problem, being the third-largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions, especially in China and the US. In 2021 global food waste was worth 75 billion euros and that’s from retail alone. The major factor – is poor product expiry date tracking in retail. Most often it is conditioned by overstocking food products.
Mutual case study results:
Business Case – Single Convenience Store
A store saves about 5,337 €/Year using Whywaste app with Tasku gig workforce.
Based on averaged results from a number of stores:
Extra resources:
Full partnership case study: https://bit.ly/3xaTzzY
Video interview with Traxlo and Whywaste: https://youtu.be/GzoPkPhjXN4
Contacts: https://tasku.app/ and https://www.whywaste.com/
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