Afresh Optimizes Fresh Supply Chain With Purpose-Built Solutions; Matt Schwartz Details

SAN FRANCISCO - Taking a dynamic process and simplifying it into an intuitive, streamlined approach is something Afresh does well. As the company continues to revolutionize production planning, buying, and the overall fresh supply chain, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Matt Schwartz took some time to discuss the strategic advantages sparked by the company’s innovative offerings.

“Fresh food is how people choose where to shop, and from a strategic perspective for grocers, it's how they differentiate. Despite the importance of the fresh food industry, we observed that most of the technology built for grocery and food retail was designed for center store, non-perishable goods,” Matt explains to me. “The result of that is all of the mission-critical functions within the fresh supply chain have been incredibly underserved by technology. So, the simple thesis that we had in starting the company was, ‘The future of food is fresh. Technology is stuck in the past.’ If we could build a fresh-food-first solution, we could massively reduce food waste and multiply the profitability of retailers and other food companies.”

Since its 2017 launch, Afresh has expanded its portfolio to include a full Fresh Store Suite, which has drastically improved partners’ store replenishment inventory management and production planning. The company also recently announced the launch of its innovative, distribution-level Fresh Buying solution.

“The new Fresh Buying solution is an intelligent, AI-native solution that allows for optimized chain-wide purchasing of produce, meat, seafood, deli, and bakery items while accounting for all of the special situations items encounter, such as quality rejections, promotion opportunities, split trucks, etc. No technology does that today,” Matt shares. “By connecting store ordering, store production, inventory management, and distribution center-level buying, we've created an end-to-end supply chain tailor-made for the idiosyncrasies and complexity of fresh food.”

This focus on fresh—backed by years of experience in the food industry—makes Afresh an ideal partner for those looking to streamline their fresh operations, increase profitability, and reduce food waste. At the heart of these updates is the company’s data capabilities, which include several patent-pending AI and deep learning data models that elegantly interpret complex fresh data. This is also supported by Afresh’s user-centered design, crafted to fit the ideal workflow of today’s fresh buyer.

“We've applied deep learning to the traditional use cases of demand forecasting and ordering in fresh. When we started the company in 2017, grocers always told us the dream is to connect their intelligence from farm to fork,” Matt continues. “Grocers want to make sure they're ordering the right amount at the store, buying the right amount at the DC, merchandising it in exciting and compelling ways for consumers, to build a profitable, agile supply chain. For the first time, there’s a fresh-first system that goes from end-to-end, making all of that possible.”

Afresh’s fresh solutions span the entire produce department, as well as the deli, bakery, and meat departments. The fresh innovator integrates with a grocer's core systems, which then deploy its software into stores for employees to use on handheld devices. At the distribution level, fresh buyers can log on through a web application to navigate their workflow.

While experienced buyers can do a good job of managing their items using their intuition and tracking historical data from several sources, they often get stuck fighting fires of late trucks, quality rejections, and more. Afresh provides an easy-to-use system that can examine years of data and identify how different scenarios have played out in the past and provide buyers with a recommendation to keep shelves stocked.

“You can't take an AI system that's made for dry grocery and ship it into fresh. It has to be purpose-built,” Matt emphasizes. “Fresh is so dynamic and has so much real-time judgment involved that it is critical not to replace people and their expertise, but to augment and assist them.”

Afresh’s cutting-edge solutions are already being optimized by grocery chains such as Wakefern Food Corp., Morton Williams Supermarket, Albertsons, and more.

As the industry innovator continues to enhance fresh operations with its state-of-the-art portfolio, ANUK will be here to report on the latest.