News

Albert Heijn is stepping up the fight against food waste. The Ahold Delhaize subsidiary has developed a solution in-house that bundles its four existing initiatives against food waste in its customer app. The so-called ‘Laatste Kans Koopjes’ – Last Chance Bargains – offer dynamically graded discounts on products with a short shelf life.

British retailer Sainsbury’s has started a trial of biometric recognition technology in two stores, located in Sydenham, South London, and Bath, in the South West of England. The technology comes from Facewatch.

With its new digital platform ‘Spar-Produktwelt’ (Spar Product World), Austrian Spar provides information on prices, origins, and availability of more than 25,000 products from its food range. Customers of company-operated stores in Austria can now access the database via an icon in the Spar app or the company's website.

Morrisons will become the first retailer in the UK to trial Instacart’s Caper digital shopping trolley. Starting in early 2026, the retailer plans to pilot the technology in one store, with the potential for further rollout.

Following the failed attempt to introduce the Enfore cash register software from the now-insolvent start-up NumberFour AG, Fressnapf is continuing its digital transformation with GK. Europe's leading retailer of pet supplies will migrate all its store services to the GK Cloud4Retail cloud platform.

Biohof Peters, a neighbourhood store at Lake Steinhude, relies on self-scanning technology from software provider Lokbest. Customers can shop there daily from 5am to 11pm via an app – without the need for an employee to be on site.

For Belgium, Aldi Nord has chosen SoluM. The discount giant is currently still in negotiations with further technology providers for other countries.

With its Connected Store in GS1 Germany's Knowledge Centre, VusionGroup demonstrates how its technology optimises brick-and-mortar retail through the interaction of real-time data, AI and IoT.

Selgros, the cash and carry market operator belonging to Coop Switzerland, has brought the Supersmart solution for validation after self-scanning to Germany. The two Selgros stores in Neu-Isenburg and Braunschweig have already been equipped with the solution, which uses weight data and intelligent analyses to verify self-scanning.

British supermarket operator Waitrose is trialling Shopic's clip-on devices for shopping trolleys for the first time at a store in Bracknell. Toby Pickard, Retail Futures Senior Partner at the British Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD), told The Retail Optimiser that, according to sales staff, the solution has been in use there for a few weeks. This is the first installation…