Ice cream is the ultimate on-the-go treat. With a fleet of 3 million ice cream freezers strategically placed in stores, airports and supermarkets around the world, Unilever leverages technologies such as AI to efficiently meet consumer demand.
“To win these impulse sales, our brands need to be available in the right place at the right time,” says Sarosh Hussain, head of digital sales systems at Ice Cream.
“For example, if a customer interrupts their trip to a gas station to buy a Magnum and the freezer is out of stock, there is no second chance, the sale is lost.”
Deploy AI on our freezer fleet
Most of our ice cream brands are sold through distributors who have a significant number of retailers to serve.
Ensuring that the retailers who house these freezers always have our best-sellers in stock was a key factor in equipping the ice cream cabinets with AI.
Work is currently underway to add this technology to 30% of our best-selling mirror cabinets for priority markets. To date, 100,000 freezers have been equipped with this technology. “We are aiming to reach 350,000 in the next two years,” says Sarosh.
Smart freezer restocking
The software in each freezer is carefully positioned to only take photos of the stock inside the freezer, rather than general images of the store.
Images are taken periodically and automatically sent to the cloud where they are analyzed by an AI trained to identify only our ice cream brands, analyze their depth in the cabinet and use an algorithm to generate an order for the distributor.
“It’s like two eyes looking at our stock every day,” says Sarosh. This also means that every time a point of sale requests stock, the distributor knows, through data, exactly what their freezer needs.
Win sales with actionable data
So far, the increase in orders and retail sales driven by data from our AI-enabled freezers has been significant.
“There is no one-size-fits-all solution. It varies from country to country,” says Sarosh. “But we have seen gradual growth from 8% in Türkiye to 12% in the United States and up to 30% in Denmark.”
In Hungary, where almost 10% of its freezer fleet was equipped with AI this summer, work was also carried out to integrate the freezer system with those used by distributors.
In addition to seeing the retailer’s regular ice cream order, distributors receive an order recommendation based on images and AI analysis of stock levels in the cabinet.
The response from distributors and retailers to these “recommendations” has been positive. So far, nearly 5% of orders have been generated using data from the AI system this ice cream season.
Improve the skills of sales teams and generate savings
“Data also helps upskill our sales teams by providing them with insights that allow them to better understand their businesses to cross-sell or upsell and make their calls more productive and proactive.
“Knowing what stock needs to be restocked before entering a point of sale means that time normally spent on the ordering process can be used on tasks such as new business development and merchandising,” adds Sarosh.
And these are not the only advantages. Each ice cream order is shipped by refrigerated trucks. “If you understand more precisely which customer wants what, distributors can plan their tertiary route and distribute to points of sale more efficiently and cost-effectively,” he explains.
To win impulse sales, our brands must be available in the right place and at the right time.
Sarosh Hussain, Head of Digital Sales Systems at Ice Cream
Align data with our marketing
Big data from our freezer fleet will also give us clearer insights into the performance of new product launches as well as marketing campaigns.
“By analyzing this data, we should be able to understand whether our ice cream brand’s premium campaigns had a positive correlation on freezer sales and inventory.
“We will be able to compare freezer sales from previous seasons to determine whether new products add value or cannibalize our core business, and will have the information needed to re-evaluate promotion planning and re-forecast accordingly,” Sarosh explains.
Big data, big opportunities for the future
Ensuring availability and shelf share is just the start of what our AI-enabled freezers can do.
“If 350,000 of our freezers are equipped with AI, we will have a large enough data set to provide analytics on product visibility and supply chain strategy. And we will be able to increase our ice cream sales by serving our customers better than ever.