How optimal product pricing can lead to less supermarket food waste

Food loss and waste severely undermine food system sustainability and contribute to greenhouse gas emissions when disposed of in landfills. Approximately 13 percent of globally produced food is lost between harvest and retail, while an estimated 17 percent is wasted in households, food service, and retail combined.

Urgent action is required to hasten the reduction of food loss and waste, aligning with the UN Sustainable Development Goals targeting a 50% decrease in food waste by 2030.

While supermarkets share responsibility for food waste, their commitment to sustainability could significantly contribute to solving this issue.

Optimal Pricing Strategies is one of the keys to reducing food waste.

Minimising food waste involves adopting optimal pricing strategies for products nearing their best-before dates. Paying full price for perishables like meat or vegetables at a supermarket when they're close to expiration doesn't align logically. Encouraging purchases by offering reduced prices as products approach their best-before dates can significantly reduce food waste.

Pricing strategies are already deployed by supermarkets to try and sell off food that is nearing its use-by date. However, they are not always used to their full potential, or in a consistent manner. The labelling system can cause confusion, because there is widespread misunderstanding about what the terms ‘use by’, ‘best-before, and ‘sell-by mean. Leveraging AI presents a more precise approach to address this challenge.

However, solely relying on pricing based on best-before dates doesn't comprehensively resolve the food waste issue, Supermarkets should focus on maximum product utilization beyond traditional data-based pricing.

Dynamic shelf-life AI’ a flagship product of Singular Intelligence not only allows the price of items to be reduced in line with decreasing use-by or best before dates, but It can also adjust the price of the product based on the actual quality of the product, which holds immense appeal for manufacturers, retailers, supermarkets and consumers alike.

The application of Dynamic Shelf-Life AI can assess product quality and shelf life across the supply chain, allowing pricing based on actual product quality rather than solely relying on best-before dates.

Adjustment of prices based on actual quality of the product itself, will lead to far less perfectly usable food being discarded by both supermarkets and consumers.