AI-powered enhancements to help retailers slash food waste and boost sustainability and profitability

AI-powered analyst Retail Insight has today (31 July) announced significant enhancements to its WasteInsight platform with several powerful new capabilities.

The three new features build on the company’s existing expiration date management solutions, prompted markdowns and dynamic markdowns, further expanding the impact on food waste reduction and inventory optimisation, it says.

The enhanced tool helps retailers transform food waste from a financial burden into a strategic opportunity, enabling them to ensure food safety compliance while preventing chronic overstock issues before they arise.

In an era where approximately one-third of all food produced globally goes to waste, these insights enable retailers to simultaneously boost profit margins, streamline operations, and meet increasingly stringent regulatory requirements for waste reduction and food safety.

“Food waste has moved from a backroom operational headache to a boardroom-level priority,” said Alex Considine Tong, chief product office. “With razor-thin margins and heightened consumer scrutiny, retailers can no longer afford to treat waste as a mere line-item expense.

“We’re equipping our customers with not just better visibility, but enhanced AI-driven foresight to act before stock becomes a problem. That’s a game-changer for retailers and a big step toward reducing both waste and risk.”

Once an item has passed through markdown but remains unsold, it becomes eligible for donation, binning or alternative re-use (such as animal feed). With Intelligent Donation Enablement, store colleagues simply scan the item in the RI app to check eligibility based on retailer-defined rules. If the product qualifies, they can immediately print a donation label to mark it for collection, simplifying the in-store process while supporting compliance.

With greater visibility into both risk and opportunity, store teams can make faster, more informed decisions – reducing waste, improving operational efficiency, and strengthening their brand’s environmental impact in the communities they serve.