Food Expiry Tracker for smart vending

Consumer demand and interest towards fresh, healthier food options have grown in the past years. But with 1.3 billion tons of food going to waste every year, the tools to limit food waste must also evolve. With Selfly Stores food expiry tracker, item-level data can be used to reduce food waste.

RFID technology is used in the food industry to automate processes, provide real-time ‘track and trace’ –functionalities, and support next-generation unmanned retail. By providing transparency to the supply chain, sales, and inventory, the use of this technology enables better demand forecasting and stock planning, which can help in food-waste reduction.

The RFID-enabled Selfly Store expiry date management feature is specially designed to help food retailers, such as grocers, caterers, and other fresh food providers to reduce food waste. The feature is built on Selfly Cloud and designed to be used together with Selfly Store’s smart vending machines. The food expiry date feature provides retailers with:

Automatic tracking of expiry dates
Utilizing sustainable ECO RFID tags and the Selfly Cloud, the expiry date of each fresh food package sold from the Selfly Cabinet can be tracked in real-time. As RFID technology gives a unique identity to products on item-level, manual checking of expiration dates is not required. Item-level identification of products is unique to RFID-based solutions and cannot be achieved with other systems, such as weight- or camera-based systems.

Instant notifications
Automatic notifications of soon-to-expire products are visible on Selfly Cloud. Alerts can also be received via email. This enables cabinet operators to react in time to boost the sale of these items before the expiry date or ‘use-by’ date is reached.

Expiry-related discount rules
The system gives cabinet operators the ability to automate item-, cabinet- and location-specific discount rules for products that are approaching the end of their shelf life. With this remote price management, the sales of soon-to-expire products can be boosted without the need for on-site staff.

Display screen advertisement
The Selfly Cabinet display screen can be used to display promotions, discounts or other advertisements to boost the sales of expiring products. The ads can be created and activated remotely.

Automatic locking of cabinet
Should there be a situation where a product expires before it is removed from the cabinet, automatic locking of the cabinet can be enabled. This helps prevent the use of the cabinet by consumers before the expired items have been removed.