How AI is Transforming the Grab&Go Food Market

Around the world, one out of three ready meals is thrown away upon reaching its sell-by date. The resulting mountain of food waste makes up one of the biggest threats to both the Earth’s climate and the world economy. It makes up an enormous portion of the world’s overall CO2 emissions and causes staggering economic losses, all while perpetuating food injustice and threatening local businesses. Kirill Sizyumov, CEO and co-founder of AI-based food tech solution FooDoo, shared his ideas on how this problem could be solved by technologies in the Grab & Go sector. Technology for Sustainability The problem of food waste in the Grab & Go market is rooted in the planning stage. Today, the food industry operates according to the principle that the more products on the shelf, the better, all in the name of increasing profit margins. In fact, the primary result of this approach is excessive waste and spoiled food. The innovative approach can combine unique hardware and software elements. Vending machines and self-service micro-stores use barcode scanners to track their inventory. This technology is commonplace and easy to implement; however, it cannot track products from the beginning of their lifecycles, which makes it impossible to plan around their individual expiration dates. To solve this, we can adopt a solution that relies on RFID tags. RFID tags eliminate the need for visual contact between the scanning device and the product, as the technology works via radio waves — you can think of each product “connecting” to the machine like a wireless network. The advantages are pretty incredible, compared to the classic vending machine model. For users, the process is far simpler: they just need to open the door and take a product out of the fridge, without rummaging for change or taking a risk on a broken machine. More importantly, though, this technology lets each machine track all expiration dates individually, all while monitoring demand and inventory in real-time so that the machine operator can plan future purchasing and stock. An AI-based software solution should work in concert with this hardware. All of the information collected by these machines is sent to a data center, where a custom AI model studies customers’ purchases, correlating demand with the full range of expiration dates. This information then goes on to the machines’ suppliers, who can then adjust the menus available at each location to minimize waste and maximize customer satisfaction. After all, who wants to get to their lunch break and realize that their favorite mac & cheese is sold out? Technology for Fighting Food Insecurity Through smart planning, we are able to eliminate almost 50% of food waste, compared to the Grab & Go market average. This result is incredibly important, considering that the 35-45% of food that is thrown away results in catastrophic levels of CO2 emissions. What’s more, this isn’t the end of the benefits this technology can offer. In a short period of time, by reducing waste with the help of machines’ software, our partners in the food service industry have been able to drastically improve the quality and variety of their offerings. By tracking the expiration dates of the microstores’ inventory, the software could even offer customers discounts on their favorite dishes when the packages approached the end of their shelf lives! Best of all, this technology is also applicable to other markets. Take, for example, the agricultural industry: sensors can be installed in fields to collect real-time data on crops, cross-reference weather data, analyze the results, and help farmers make informed strategic decisions. One potential application is a smart irrigation system: it can analyze weather data and soil conditions to dispense the right amount of water on a particular day, automatically turning irrigation systems on and off. Agro-industrial drones are another potentially exciting development, as they can monitor, sow, and irrigate autonomously based on a set of input coordinates. All of these approaches stand to help agriculture, among other industries, reduce costs, increase productivity and cut waste. AI-based hardware and software solutions like the self-service Grab & Go outlets are just the beginning of a new industrial revolution, designed to continue improving people’s lives while taking drastic measures to preserve our planet. Climate change is the greatest existential threat facing humankind today, and the key to effectively and comprehensively combating it lies in eliminating the barriers and inconvenience that all of us face in doing our part.