Annette Böhm

A nine-member independent jury has selected this year's winners of the Reta Awards on behalf of the EHI Retail Institute. Winners in five categories include retail companies such as E.Leclerc, Edeka, Fressnapf, Ikea, Rewe, Salling Group and Tegut.

In the first fully automated 24/7 store of Edeka Südwest at the railway station in Renningen, a robotics system from the Stuttgart start-up Smark picks the goods from the back area.

Consumers want more transparency. Product scanner apps for shoppers' smartphones are booming. However, the evaluation of a product can only be as good as the quality of the data set available in the app. It is worth taking a look at the cooperation between the French pioneers Alkemics and Yuka.

Nutri-Score based on the French model comes to Germany. The commitment of major German retailers to use the nutritional label on their private-label products increases the pressure on brand manufacturers. In France, retail primus E.Leclerc is a pioneer.

In a pilot store, Tegut is testing to sell an assortement of 800 articles around the clock. The subsidiary of Migros Zurich relies on solutions from Wanzl, Snabble and Pan Oston in its T-Box for access control, self-scanning, anti-theft protection and check-out. Further stores are planned for autumn.

The Northern Italian grocery retail cooperative Gruppo Végé has started to optimise the stocks in its about 100 Migross stores with the forecasting software of Finnish specialist Relex.

When developing its new workforce app, Fressnapf focused on its processes and the need of the employees of its franchisees. Instead of introducing ready-made software, the pet supply retailer has the IBM-owned web developer ECX (ecx.io) from Düsseldorf develop according to its own requirements. Together with the staff on the sales floor, Fressnapf identified pain points and defined new processes…

The US-American retailer Heinen's opts for a contactless salad preparation robot in times of government hygiene measures. The supermarket operator is now rolling out the machine, named Sally from Californian start-up Chowbotics, in its stores.