Giant Eagle, Jerry's Foods, Knowlan’s Amplify Commitment to Food Safety
Three grocers are striving to prioritize customer satisfaction and operational efficiency while maintaining high food safety standards. Grocery chains Giant Eagle, Jerry’s Foods and Knowlan’s Fresh Foods have renewed, upgraded and expanded their relationships with SmartSense by Digi, part of Digi International and a global provider of Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity solutions, to help amplify their commitment to ongoing food safety practices and quality assurance.
SmartSense enables associates to unlock the power of their data with digital decisioning that can boost quality control, employee productivity, asset protection and compliance. According to the Boston-based company, grocers can simplify food safety initiatives and gain real-time visibility into asset performance and monitoring with its IoT framework.
Over the last six years, SmartSense has protected 216 pharmacies for Giant Eagle and provided digital task management for its 182 grocery locations and 128 convenience stores. The Pittsburgh-based grocer relies on 32,000 SmartSense digital temperature monitoring devices to monitor critical food assets remotely, automatically, and continuously.
By responding to SmartSense alerts and executing prescriptive actions, Giant Eagle maintained proper holding conditions for more than 72 million dollars’ worth of product in 2023. It has renewed its program with SmartSense while also expanding the relationship into fresh food manufacturing to help ensure efficiency, compliance and the highest food safety standards.
“We are impressed with the SmartSense team’s ongoing commitment to innovative solutions and look forward to applying their data insights and prescriptive analytics towards our fresh foods manufacturing operations,” said Vic Vercammen, VP of risk and chief compliance officer of Giant Eagle. “Our ongoing relationship serves as a testament to the impactful outcomes we have seen throughout our stores and pharmacies.”
In the last seven years of working with SmartSense, Jerry’s Foods has rolled out operations throughout 23 locations to deliver fresh and high-quality products to their customers. Jerry's Foods is the largest Cub Foods franchise in the United States, operating in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, Wisconsin and in Florida.
“The continued support from SmartSense helps us uphold our dedication to a customer-centric approach to business,” said Dana Glade, director of retail operations at Jerry’s Foods. “Since our inception, Jerry’s Foods has remained committed to delivering quality perishables and customer experiences. The specialized support from SmartSense has provided us with the descriptive insights that we were looking for to keep food fresh and our customers healthy.”
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Knowlan's Super Markets, Inc./Festival Foods of Minnesota family-owned community stores have worked with SmartSense for six years and have deployed SmartSense solutions across 10 locations.
“Our focus on food safety that delivers high quality foods continues to enhance with our digital temperature monitoring recording and alert program,” said Jason Herfel, president at Knowlan's Fresh Foods. “SmartSense solutions have continued to foster an even greater culture of food safety excellence that has been experienced throughout our stores by both customers and associates.”
Giant Eagle operates approximately 480 stores throughout western Pennsylvania, north central Ohio, northern West Virginia, Maryland and Indiana. The company is No. 42 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2024 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America. PG also named the company one of its Top Regional Retailers.
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