Wasteless partners with NX-Food to bring waste-reducing tech to METRO stores
Wasteless’ pricing system is being upscaled for use at METRO, a leading international wholesale company, after partnerships with food-tech catalyst NX-Food and the EU’s EIT Food
DÜSSELDORF, Germany, May 5, 2021 - Wasteless, the turnkey technology solution for reducing food waste in retail, is announcing a successful collaboration with NX-Food to bring Wasteless pricing systems into stores from METRO, one of the world’s leading wholesale specialists. EIT Food, an innovation platform of leading EU corporates and academic centers, co-funded by the EU, provided substantial support and visibility for the partnership and continues to work with Wasteless to bring the technology to more stores in Europe.
Following extensive testing, Wasteless technology will be securely and seamlessly integrated in grocery-giant METRO’s POS system. The new pricing system will first go live at selected makro stores, part of the METRO group in Poland, and a wider rollout of Wasteless’ AI-driven pricing technology is expected throughout METRO’s network of wholesale stores.
Founded in 2016, Wasteless focuses on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by reducing food waste in retail and wholesale, one of the top-five causes of greenhouse gas emissions. Wasteless’ technology brings optimization to the pricing of perishables, using a proprietary AI-driven markdown engine to set prices automatically. By offering attractive and transparent markdowns that integrate seamlessly in stores, Wasteless helps supermarkets keep profits out of the dumpster while saving consumers money by incentivizing greener shopping habits.
The technology Wasteless implements in supermarkets has been shown to reduce food waste by at least 40%. The company has confidence that this number will climb to 80% with further refinements of the system, including the development of the AI-engine’s capabilities (reinforcement learning). Given the fact that food waste is definitely a drag on a grocer's bottom line, METRO can avoid operating losses on one hand. On the other hand, the introduction and roll-out of the Wasteless technology is another leap towards meeting the wholesaler's ambitious goal of halving food waste in its own operations by 2025.
As an active partner and consultant of this project, NX-Food introduced Wasteless to METRO and currently facilitates the integration with METRO sales systems, aligning the teams of makro Poland, tech-unit METRO Digital, and METRO AG. NX-Food, founded in early 2018 within METRO, was decoupled as an independent company in October 2020, thus providing added trust with wholesaler METRO, which operates in 34 different countries and generated €25.6 billion in sales in the last fiscal year.
“In 2016, we committed to halving food waste in our own operations by 2025. Since then we have optimized our own operations but also partnered up with companies, start-ups, and NGOs along our supply chain,” said Veronika Pountcheva, Global Director Corporate Responsibility at METRO AG. “When it comes to addressing environmental impact while improving profitability, we see high potential in the Wasteless technology. We look forward to rolling out the trial in Poland to understand how customers, as well as our own operations benefit.”
“Our mission is to help food-tech startups become more successful and to help corporations innovate sustainably,” said Clément Tischer, Head of Innovation and Partnerships at NX-Food. “The Wasteless-METRO partnership is essentially what we designed NX-Food for: bringing together a future-proof, state-of-the-art, purpose-driven food tech start-up with existing players to reshape the current status quo.”
“For METRO’s customers, Wasteless helps save money by shopping more sustainably,” said Oded Omer, Co-Founder and CEO of Wasteless. “For the store managers, the Wasteless solution is an evolution of inventory control systems. To work with a global market leader like METRO is a huge win for us as we grow and show the world what our technology is capable of. Most importantly, this is a huge win for the environment. There’s a lot of talk about sustainability in business, but it only really works if it’s also profitable."
About Wasteless
Founded in 2016, Wasteless is a sustainable fintech company that fights global warming by reducing food waste in supermarkets. In addition to benefiting food retailers, consumers, and the environment, Wasteless helps retailers to repair their costly discounts by applying its AI-Based markdown optimization solution. Food waste reduction is considered the third most impactful measure to reverse climate change. Forty percent of food ends up in landfills, making it the single largest CO2 emitter. Wasteless’ machine-learning technology aims to eradicate food waste in retail. It is backed by $9.75M in funding, led by Slingshot Ventures (NL), Zora Ventures (US), SOSV (US) IT-Farm (Japan), Food Angels (Germany), Strategic industry-related investors, and IIA grants. The company was singled out in the FAO’s State of Food & Agriculture 2019 and received the 2020 and 2022 EU Seal of Excellence. The company won several awards, including XTC Global 1st place in food-tech and agriculture and the Accenture AI Award for its proprietary AI pricing engine. Most recently, the organization was selected by The Circulars and Uplink of the World Economic Forum as a leading solution to boost the circular economy.
About NX-Food
Because the planet is changing, we need to change the way we think about food and act: Encourage innovations, promote sustainable living, and move with change. This is achieved by Next Generation Foods. NX-Food innovates and enriches food production for everyone and helps companies implement their innovations. To this end, we pursue the venture client approach and open the doors to new and innovative food products, solutions and providers. For individual questions we develop customized portfolios of concepts. For future-oriented grocery-shopping and conscious nutrition. For our own health — and the health of our planet.
About METRO
METRO is a leading international wholesale company with food and non-food assortments that specializes in serving the needs of hotels, restaurants, and caterers (HoReCa) as well as independent traders. Around the world, METRO has some 16 million customers, who can choose whether to shop in one of the large-format stores, order online and collect their purchases at the store, or have them delivered. METRO also supports the competitiveness of entrepreneurs and independent businesses with digital solutions and thereby contributes to cultural diversity in retail and hospitality. Sustainability is a key pillar of METRO’s business. METRO has been listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for 7 consecutive years. The company operates in 34 countries and employs more than 97,000 people worldwide. In the fiscal year 2019/20, METRO generated sales of €25.6 billion. For more information, please visit www.metroag.de. In addition, in our online magazine www.mpulse.de, we also report on the things that affect our customers, employees, partners and suppliers – and the things that we do for them.
