Grocer North West Company ensures compliance, performance with AI

The parent of grocery banners such as Giant Tiger and RiteWay is obtaining multiple benefits from a smart recipe-tracking solution.

The North West Company, which operates more than 200 grocery stores in Canada, Alaska, the South Pacific and the Caribbean, has been utilizing the Invafresh artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)-based Fresh Retail Platform Scale Management solution to manage and distribute item-level regulatory and compliance data across its network of production scales, labelling equipment and printers.

Now, North West Company is expanding its Invafresh deployment by rolling out Invafresh Recipe Management to include allergen and nutritional information on food labels. In addition, the grocer will be able to measure the performance of each store by ingredient demand for recipes.

This will create a centralized source of “recipe truth,” providing benefits such as reducing shrink and forecasting the cost of recipes against actual costs, which North West hopes will improve operating margins by accounting for production based on food, labor, packaging cost, and recipe yield.

Also, by integrating Recipe Management with its existing Invafresh Scale Management solution, The North West Company will be able to produce regulatory-compliant nutrition labels with accurate ingredients and allergen statements across the enterprise.

"We have been using Invafresh's Scale Management solution with very positive results due to the ease of use for our in-store employees and flexibility of the platform. Extending our relationship with Invafresh to include Recipe Management will help take our operations to the next level in the use of analytics to deliver an improved customer experience," said Vineet Gupta, CIO, The North West Company. "Having Invafresh as the foundational technology for our perimeter store operations, including deli, meat, bakery, and produce, will allow us to scale efficiently as the business grows."

"With our Fresh Retail Platform, The North West Company will be able to unlock critical data that will allow it to better allocate labor resources, reduce shrink, and drive increased efficiencies," said Tim Spencer, CEO at Invafresh. "We are excited to strengthen our partnership with The North West Company as it seeks to further automate in-store processes to deliver an exceptional customer experience."

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The North West Company Inc., through its subsidiaries, is a retailer of food and everyday products and services to rural communities and urban neighborhoods in Canada, Alaska, the South Pacific and the Caribbean. North West operates 221 stores under the trading names Northern, NorthMart, Giant Tiger, Alaska Commercial Company, Cost-U-Less and RiteWay Food Markets.