Ida is a promising new French startup aiming to revolutionize the ordering process for fresh products, including fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry, and fish, in supermarkets and grocery stores. The company has recently secured a seed funding round of $2.9 million (€2.7 million) from notable investors such as Frst, Daphni, Motier Ventures, and Kima Ventures.
Currently, grocery stores depend on cumbersome order sheets filled with numerous columns detailing their reordering schedule. Unfortunately, these error-prone tables contribute to both food waste and product shortages, causing supermarkets to either lose money or forfeit potential revenue.
"The person responsible for vegetables will often rely on these paper sheets and a pen," explained co-founder and CEO Mateo Beacco. "They’ll meticulously go through stock line by line, and inevitably, some guesswork comes into play. For instance, based on a good feeling about the weather, they might decide to order four crates of eggplants."
While experienced staff reference past trends to inform their decisions—like recognizing when it’s time to reorder strawberries—the rising turnover in grocery jobs makes consistent accuracy challenging. Thus, Ida seeks to transform this outdated process by equipping grocers with better tools. The Ida app operates on a tablet, leveraging a sales forecasting algorithm to assist users in knowing when fresh products need to be reordered.
Starting with vegetables and fruits, Ida sees potential for expansion into other perishables like meat and fish. By zeroing in on fresh items, Ida addresses a critical aspect of supermarket inventory, where barcode systems easily track shelf-stable items but struggle with perishable goods. As Beacco states, “SAP provides just a rolling average."
Ida’s methodology transcends mere sales data from points of sale, particularly ineffective for fruits and vegetables. Instead, it employs a probabilistic inventory approach that incorporates realistic scenarios.
"For example, cucumber sales are intertwined with organic cucumber sales, since cashiers may label organic cucumbers as non-organic," Beacco noted. "Additionally, while potatoes have a longer shelf life, cherries can spoil rapidly."
This innovative system allows Ida to estimate inventory levels without requiring precise counts. If discrepancies arise, store staff can make necessary adjustments to the inventory figures.
Ida's forecasting also considers over a hundred different factors, including weather patterns, seasonality, local pricing, neighboring grocery stores, and promotional offers, all synthesized with at least three years of sales history.
Furthermore, Ida uses this intelligent data to formulate future orders. Stores can set a safety stock level, ensuring that they avoid running out of key items without overstocking.
"As I mentioned, eggplants come in 2-kilogram crates, presenting a unique mathematical challenge of optimization under constraints. For instance, I need to order in 2 kg increments, and based on all available data, we aim for four crates, rather than three or five,” Beacco elaborated.
Ida doesn’t autonomously process orders; rather, the app allows staff to review suggestions and make manual adjustments if necessary. Currently, approximately 70 to 75% of Ida's recommendations are deemed accurate without requiring changes by grocers. Once orders are finalized, Ida generates forms for the central purchasing office and can even coordinate with local producers by blending multiple suppliers within its app.
Though Ida is still early in its journey, the startup is poised to make significant strides in the industry. Other emerging companies, like Guac in the U.S., are also exploring this vertical. It will be fascinating to observe whether grocery stores adopt these software solutions for managing fresh products on a larger scale. It appears a clear opportunity exists for supermarkets to enhance their profitability while also reducing their environmental footprint.
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