Companion Baking’s new palletizing robot – affectionately called Bruce Banner (aka The Incredible Hulk) by the staff – enables this innovative St. Louis bakery the ability to achieve a higher level of production efficiency and equipment sophistication.
As summer kicks into high gear, retailers will look to tropicals and melons as a way to help their produce departments stand out. And technology and merchandising innovations from suppliers and industry organizations will make those efforts easier than ever.
The pandemic has highlighted tremendous opportunities for technology to solve continuing challenges impacting consumer behavior in fresh, said Muntazir Mehdi, senior product manager for analytics and AI for Toronto-based Invafresh, whose technologies are currently being used in more than 25,000 grocery stores in 15 countries.
Highly perishables now make up 39% of grocery stores, and produce alone is nearly 24%. These items have a short lifespan and are ripe for waste if not purchased. And food waste is expensive: shrink costs retailers $52 billion annually.