Case Study

East of England Co-op sells more and wastes less with WasteInsight

Region: UK
Employees: 3,800+
Turnover: £348.6 million
Website: www.eastofengland.coop

About the client

East of England Co-op is the largest independent retailer operating in the East of England. They provide food stores and specialist services, such as funerals, security, travel agents, and petrol filling stations, to communities across Essex, Suffolk, and Norfolk.

They are a diverse and modern business with a significant property portfolio and other businesses, such as events and conference facilities and stonemasonry.

As a cooperative business, they are run differently from other big organizations, putting their members first. Their focus has always been, and always will be, the local communities in their region.

Solutions used

WasteInsight

Dump your inefficient waste processes
Sell more and waste less with our data-led software solution

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5% Improvment in sell-through
2.26% Benefit calculation improvement

Challenges and goals

East of England is a community retailer and co-operative dating back 150 years. With a rich local history, it is only natural that one of their key business goals is sustainability and supporting their colleagues and communities to thrive.

To do this, they needed a partner to provide a simple and effective waste tool to drive tangible results and support their existing markdown processes and technology.

Partnership and solution

We worked closely with the East of England Co-op in Q4 2022 to support them in increasing the amount of time between each markdown to reduce staff burden and increase sell-through. We did this through detailed algorithm changes, which made our algorithm more aggressive, to ensure the best offering for the customer and minimize food waste.

"We continue to work together to achieve East of England's sustainability goals and reduce food waste. The machine learning waste app continues to deliver YoY Improvements, this is supplemented with analysis from our team to drive performance further and ensure the best results for our partner."

Jessica Westwell
Client Manager

Results

The results have been significant, with sell-through improving by over 5% vs. Q4 2021, even with 56% more products entering the reduce-to-clear process.

The benefit calculation also improved by 2.26% YoY ensuring both measures of success made clear improvements.

We continue to build on this success and tailor the tool to suit East of England's business needs. Fruit and vegetables are a key area of opportunity, with products having shorter self-lives and entering the process more frequently, with the need to balance quality checks with optimum product offerings for the customer. This area benefitted from the change with a 8.25% improvement in benefit YoY and a 9.43% increase in sell-through.

"We really appreciate the ability of the solution, to ensure compliance with society policy. At a product line level, we can determine what can or can't be reduced and by how much. The increased confidence that we can target specific products and not others, means we can reduce products in areas where there are legal considerations."

Mark Winter
Retail Analyst