Customers at the helm – Bizerba to present retail innovations at EuroShop 2023

Intelligent self-services make self-service easy in the fresh and convenience departments. Smart shelves in the store trigger an automatic and swift replenishment process. Self-checkout solutions bypass lines and manual checks. Customers have an increasing desire to be part of the processes and decisions made when shopping – and this future trend, also known as “Customer Empowerment”, is even playing a substantial role in the food trade.

“Customers want to take the wheel. They want shopping to be easier, quicker, and, above all, autonomous. For retailers, it’s a matter of staying up to date in this sector, acquiring new customers, and their retention – and right now we are prepping our innovative retail solutions,” explains Michael Berke, Vice President Global Sales & Marketing at Bizerba. “Integrated, networked Bizerba solutions and services do just this, amid an increasing demand from customers,” Berke continues.

This is why the topics of Customer Empowerment and Connected Retail will be taking center stage on the Bizerba stand at Düsseldorf’s EuroShop. Visitors will be taken through the various supermarket domains: From ordering at the order terminal via the self-service area and the fresh food counter, to the back office and smart self-checkout.

Networked order management at the fresh food counter

Customers like to decide how they order. With the new Bizerba “MyOrder” solution, they have the opportunity to place an order at the fresh food counter via Click & Collect and bypass the line. Individual order quantities of weighable fresh items are automatically sent to the counter scale K3. There they can be immediately prepared by the team using the automatic slicer VSP F and freshly packaged and labeled without media breaks in the process. For customers, the Internet of Things (IoT) eliminates waiting times, whilst considerably improving work processes for operating staff.

The new Q1 retail scale family will be showcased for the first time at the show, with Q1 being an alternative to the popular K3 scale in another price segment. This can also be integrated into the networked processes on the fresh food counter.

Constant digital inventory monitoring

Among the top exhibits at EuroShop is the revolutionary Bizerba Smart Shelf with integrated weighing technology. Here, each product removed from the shelf is detected and recorded with gram and centimeter accuracy. This means that the intelligent shelves create entirely new opportunities for efficient inventory management from the back office.

Hendrik Ohse, Bizerba Software Solutions Managing Director, explains: “With constant digital inventory monitoring we can ensure that customers are never faced with empty shelves – even in the case of fresh products.” Because intelligent shelves initiate replenishment processes automatically and just in time. This helps save resources and create a positive shopping experience. What’s more, the Smart Shelf makes a notable contribution to waste reduction by providing an insight into how sales of certain products vary depending on the day of the week, the time of day, and even the weather. “Empty shelves and expired products can also be scaled down to an absolute minimum. This will soon be more important than ever before,” Ohse continues.

Self-checkout with validation in the smallest of spaces

One of the latest innovations in the Bizerba portfolio is “TableSmart”. The revolutionary development makes scanning each product unnecessary – a validation process is already integrated into the solution. This makes the checkout process faster and easier for customers. The solution also features the required level of security for retailers in terms of leakage. The result: An approximate 90% loss reduction in comparison to Scan & Go solutions with no validation process.

Purchases set down in the designated area are automatically detected and recorded by TableSmart using object recognition in combination with AI. At the same time, weighing sensors check if the recording is complete, thus preventing loss of sales through any potentially improper detection. After no more than three seconds in total for recognition, recording, and validation, customers are able to make contactless payments with a card or smartphone. The extremely fast check-out process prevents annoying waiting times in the checkout area while ensuring a superior shopping experience.

Bizerba is considered a digital pioneer in the retail sector. At EuroShop 2023, the company will present itself as a holistic solution and digitalization partner. Johannes Hübel, Director Global Retail Sales at Bizerba, explains: “With our Bizerba solutions, the customer experience can be autonomous on many levels and future-proof. Retailers can go forth with confidence with these innovations, since they save valuable time and costs and thus ensure processes that are considerably more economic.”