Farmstead, what is dubbed as the nation's first artificial intelligence-powered digital micro-grocer, launched FreshAI, a new B2B platform that opens Farmstead's AI predictive analytics business management model to food industry companies across the food sector. Companies that will benefit from FreshAI include supermarkets, cafeterias, food production facilities, restaurants, quick-service food chains and convenience stores seeking to quickly improve profit margins and achieve waste reduction goals.
"The traditional food model is wildly outdated, with too many businesses still using fragmented pen and paper systems to order products and account for perishability," says Pradeep Elankumaran, co-founder and CEO. "This is a source reduction problem that leads supermarkets to discard 35-40% of all perishable foods, which directly contributes to their low profit margins. We are adding FreshAI to our product suite to apply Farmstead's advanced AI to all food businesses, to optimize their supply, solve for waste and increase overall profitability."
Farmstead's self-learning AI models use historical sales and operations data to predict exactly how much food will be sold each day and how many perishable products to keep in stock, while maintaining high levels of availability.
FreshAI allows food businesses to create an account and upload their operations data securely via a self-serve interface. FreshAI then provides businesses daily and weekly recommendations on exactly how much to order of each SKU based on historical sales and consumer tastes. In addition, FreshAI provides automated reports on the most wasted food products each week and operational recommendations to improve margins based on business data. At Farmstead, based in San Francisco, FreshAI's models reduced perishable food waste to under 10% in just over a year.