Festival Foods has formed a strategic partnership with Upshop, a provider of AI-driven software for store operations, with the aim of making Festival’s fresh perimeter operations more efficient.
Upshop’s Fresh software-as-a-service suite connects and digitizes workflows, streamlines ordering processes, and simplifies production operations. The platform leverages AI-driven forecasting and real-time inventory visibility for both raw and finished items, integrating such disparate workflows and data streams as pricing, ingredients, recipes, production plans and made-to-order tasks to improve operational efficiency and ensure a consistent, guided user experience for employees. The partnership comes as Festival Foods gears up for greater growth and requires systems that can rapidly scale.
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“At Festival Foods, we are committed to making decisions that further enhance the experience of our associates and our guests,” said Mark Skogen, CEO and president of De Pere, Wis.-based Festival Foods. “This partnership is about removing barriers to execution for our teams and simplifying the complexities of running a fresh department so they can focus on delivering a memorable guest experience.”
“We built our software with the goal of making it effortless for associates and stores to meet the needs of shoppers,” noted Shamus Hines, CEO of Tampa, Fla.-based Upshop. “Moreover, we have assembled a team of experts who understand how to drive adoption in-store. This partnership with Festival Foods exemplifies our commitment to empowering retailers with the tools and support needed to succeed.”
Through this partnership, Festival Foods expects significant improvements in operational efficiency, associate engagement, inventory management and overall customer satisfaction.
Festival Foods employs more than 8,000 full- and part-time associates at 40 full-service supermarkets across the state of Wisconsin. The grocer is No. 94 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2023 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America.