Dive Brief:
- Stinker Stores has partnered with data analytics and AI company Inteladata to enhance roller grill operations across all 105 of its stores, according to a Wednesday press release.
- Inteladata’s AI-powered UpDog roller grill management platform uses camera vision to monitor roller grills and record which items are selling and when. It then uses that data to create actionable plans to improve sales and reduce waste.
- Stinker joins other retailers like RaceTrac and Circle K that are using AI-powered solutions to offload certain tasks from employees, from fuel management to online delivery fulfillment.
Dive Insight:
Stinker will use UpDog’s monitoring analytics to automate inventory management and plan for its assortment of roller grill products. This tool aims to help Stinker ensure products are available when shoppers want them and fewer items get thrown away uneaten.
“With so much focus on AI, especially within the fresh food and dispensed beverage space, we see this strategic partnership as a springboard to turn a broad, hard-to-define term, such as ‘artificial intelligence,’ into ‘actionable intelligence,’ which can quickly and easily grow sales and site-level execution,” said Zach Treinen, senior category manager at Stinker.
Boise, Idaho-based Stinker, which has stores across Colorado, Idaho and Wyoming, has been investing heavily in store development technology over the past couple years. Last summer, it deployed the NCR Voyix Edge system to virtualize its point-of-sale system and allow it to run the latest software on older hardware. Then in September, Stinker refreshed its mobile app and opened its largest store to date.
C-store tech development news has been coming thick and fast lately, with EG America, Wesco and Parker’s Kitchen all announcing updates just this week. The latter two added self-checkout machines to more stores while the former added an AI planning tool.
