Coborn’s Taps Invafresh for Fresh Food Operations Management
Coborn’s is expanding its collaboration with Invafresh to optimize fresh food operations throughout its banners. The Midwest grocery chain, already a user of Invafresh’s scale management platform, will deploy the tech company’s fresh food retail platform for its merchandising and replenishment solutions.
Through this amplified partnership, Coborn’s will augment manual processes with fresh-native solutions that automate fresh ordering and the in-store production planning process across its fresh food departments. The retailer can use data on inventory management that spans discards, markdowns, transfers, conversions and cycle counts, and centralize its in-store production through Invafresh’s recipe management solutions. A food traceability solution also allows Coborn’s to adhere to U.S. Department of Agriculture requirements for ground beef recordkeeping.
The retailer made the move in light of pressures and complexities in managing fresh food operations and staying compliant with food safety and consumer disclosure regulations. “The Invafresh platform enables our store associates to focus on high-value consumer shopping experiences. As we digitize store operational processes, we are confident with the real-time visibility to a perpetual inventory for every store sales floor and backroom that all grocery retailers need to drive the best decisions for profitability and sustainability,” explained Troy Vosburgh, VP of fresh for Coborn’s.
Tim Spencer, the president and CEO of Invafresh who helps lead the company’s Freshology strategies, said that fresh item management technology solutions will make a difference in Coborn’s fresh food retailing at a pivotal time. “Fresh food is the only way to build trust and loyalty in the competitive grocery market, especially with today’s digitally driven experiential consumer. Our fresh-native platform will help Coborn’s with merchandising and replenishment across their grocery banners to ensure fresh products of the highest quality are in-stock at the right levels across their fresh assortments and offerings,” he remarked.
According to Vosburgh, the deployment of the fresh food platform has begun, and Coborn’s is already seeing “excellent adoption, usage and benefits.”
St. Cloud, Minn,-based Coborn's, Inc. is a 100-year-old employee-owned grocery retailer with nearly 9,300 employees and 59 grocery stores across Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin under the Coborn’s Case Wine Foods, Marketplace Foods and Hornbacher’s banners. Coborn’s also owns liquor, fuel and pharmacy locations. To support its 130 various retail business units, Coborn’s Inc. operates its own central bakery, dry cleaning facility and grocery distribution center. The company is No. 86 The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2021 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.
