Rewe Group

The grocery retail industry sees an massive increase in number of companies offering self-scanning with mobile devices. According to a study by Retail Banking Research (RBR), retailers already offer their customers in 32,000 sales outlets worldwide to scan items as they shop. In 80 percent of those stores, shoppers can scan with their own smartphones.

Since January 2020, retailers and restaurants in Germany have been legally obliged to issue receipts, a major annoyance for the industry. Digital receipts are a way to avoid the additional burden on the environment.

Rewe is the first German full-range food retailer to test shopping without payment at the checkout. The technology, called Pick&Go, has been tested with employees in a Cologne supermarket since the beginning of May and is expected to become available to all shoppers in late summer. Rewe Digital developed the solution with the computer vision specialist Trigo Vision from Israel.

Kaufland customers can cash in surplus coins for vouchers at Coinstar machines. A growing number of Edeka and Rewe stores is also offering the service.

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.

When selling animal products, retailers inform their customers increasingly about origin and husbandry. A rapidly growing number of independent Edeka and Rewe shop owners are going one step further. With Tierwohl-TV, they show live streams from their suppliers' stables and outdoor livestock areas.

Rewe Group in Austria is testing Bizerba's Smart Shelf technology in the bakeries of three Merkur stores, which will soon be renamed to Billa Plus. With the help of intelligent weighing technology, the retailer aims to reduce food waste and to ensure product availability for customers.

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.

Tests in some stores and even framework agreements with technology suppliers are not yet proof that electronic labels will soon be seen in all stores. Retailers will only achieve a rapid ROI if they use the labels to react more dynamically to market developments with intelligent price optimisation solutions, to optimise in-store processes or to offer customers significant additional benefits.

Douglas has chosen Relex to optimise its inventory along its entire supply chain and from a single source for its online and brick-and-mortar business. Hardly any software provider is currently reporting more success in retail than Relex. The Finnish specialist was able to report 33 new customers last year.