Overview
Created in 2012 by two brothers and a friend concerned about environmental issues, Zero Gachis is an inventive and dynamic startup company offering innovative solutions to address the ethical and environmental problems posed by food waste. With more than 600,000 tons of expired fresh produce unsold in supermarkets thrown away every year, retailers have started to promote these items with heavy discounts. However, these initiatives often lack visibility, and consumers do not know where to find the marked down products, limiting the effectiveness of marketing promotions. The Zero Gachis concept confronts this issue by providing customers with information on the availability of products that are about to expire in supermarkets near them. Zero Gachis posts a list of the promotions for these products and the quantity available in each of its partner stores on its website and iOS app every day. Retailers can also add Zero Gachis displays to dedicated areas in their stores. These displays offer more visible merchandising for the marked down products and provide information to raise customer awareness about wasting food.
The Challenge
Each store manages and labels fresh products at the end of life differently. However, they all face the same problem: lack of time and resources to effectively handle these types of markdowns. In most cases, operators simply fix a sticker with a pre-printed discount level on the product that the cashier enters manually at the checkout. This lengthens the re-labeling process and adds manual data entry at the checkout, making it more tedious. The pre-established discount levels applied also did not optimize margins on some more expensive products.
In order to efficiently manage these products with a short expiration date, Zero Gachis created a smart labeling solution that saved retailers much time and improved margins. The company needed a robust mobile computer with a high performance CPU that could support algorithms used to calculate promotions. The mobile computer also had to communicate in real-time with servers and a printer connected via Bluetooth® wireless technology.
The Solution
Zero Gachis chose the Skorpio™ X3 mobile computer from Datalogic and the E-Class Mark III compact Datamax printer to implement this solution. The Skorpio X3 device met all the required criteria and provided additional benefits, such as Datalogic’s patented 'Green Spot' technology for visual good-read feedback directly on the code. ‘Green Spot’ technology is ideal for noisy environments where a beep is not always easily heard. The ergonomic design is very popular with users and contributed to the choice of this mobile computer.
In order to make the application as comfortable and efficient as possible, Zero Gachis positioned the Skorpio X3 mobile computer on a mount placed on a supermarket cart with the scan engine facing the ground, allowing the operator to scan the products in presentation mode. Datalogic developed a special keyboard with reversed keys to support operation regardless of the mobile computer’s orientation.
To start the re-labeling process, the operator scans the end of life product with the Skorpio X3 mobile computer. The mobile computer calculates the new product price according to the discount level given to the product family. Then, a new label with a bar code and the net discounted price is printed by the Datamax printer connected via Bluetooth. The cashier no longer needs to enter the discount manually, saving time at checkout and cutting queue times. The system also updates the marked down product list in realtime on the Zero Gachis website and iOS apps.
Results
In only three months this solution has been deployed in over a dozen supermarkets in France, receiving very positive feedback from retailers with excellent results. It has helped reduce the number of unsold fresh products by almost 50% and has increased average margins of about ten cents per product. Operator efficiency and productivity have increased. This, along with improved traceability of end of life products, has ensured an optimal ROI.
"The Skorpio X3 mobile computer’s performance and reliability play a key role in the success of the labeling solution we provide to retailers," stated Paul-Adrien Menez, CEO of Zero Gachis. “The flexibility and responsiveness provided by Datalogic for the development of the special keyboard in a short time has allowed us to offer our retail partners a perfectly tailored solution for their application."
Customer: Zero Gachis
Industry/Sub-industry: Retail/Supermarkets
Application: Merchandising
Country: France
Datalogic Products: Skorpio X3 mobile computer
