Auchan Poland & Smartway: scaling the fight against food waste with AI

Auchan Poland: illustration of the limits of internal solutions

Since 2020, Auchan Poland has been working on reducing food waste. They discounted items close to expiration using an internal tool, but discount rates were random — sometimes 30%, sometimes 50% — without data to optimize them.

Auchan Poland already had strong ambition to combine sustainability, people, and profit. But in-house actions didn’t bring enough satisfaction:

• High economic loss from products thrown away
• Insufficient response to customer expectations
• Team dissatisfaction with outdated processes
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Smartway, the ideal partner for Auchan Poland

Polish consumers increasingly aim to buy responsibly while managing tight budgets. Auchan Poland realized the need to act faster. Smartway’s anti-waste AI guarantees strong economic, environmental, and consumer impact.

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People, planet, profit: collective commitment behind the change

Very good user satisfaction

80% of teams are satisfied according to the internal annual study and 72% recognize that the new technology saves time.

Implementing such a change project can be challenging. Adjusting daily habits and adapting to a new work methodology is never easy. However, as the saying goes, “teamwork makes the dream work.” From store employees on the ground to IT teams and top management, everyone has been committed from day one to working with Smartway. Their collective effort ensures that this new fight against food waste makes a real impact across the entire organization.

Indeed, teams understood what was at stake by trusting Smartway:

• Time saved every morning
• Less human errors
• A modern tool, easy-to-use on a daily basis
• Better economic results
• An action for consumers, offering discounted prices
• An action for the planet and the preservation of resources

Products sold

Up to 77,5% short dated products sold, with a correct amount of discount

Decrease in custom discount per article & per store

-17% on average (to preserve as much margin without compromising CSR results)

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A successful Before/After

Auchan Poland was well aware of the challenges of food waste long before partnering with Smartway. The company had already implemented several initiatives: discounts on short-dated products, automated markdown tools, waste monitoring reports, freshness charters, weekly review committees, donations to food banks, and surprise food bags.

Despite a strong commitment, one key element was missing to scale up the impact: a centralized, data-driven system to guide teams in real time and ensure consistency across all stores. By choosing to implement Smartway’s solution, Auchan Poland took that crucial step forward. The transformation was immediate: with smarter detection and AI-powered markdowns, daily operations in stores became faster, more efficient, and more impactful.

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Conclusion

Switching from internal tools to Smartway’s AI-powered Food Waste Management System has been a major success — for operations, consumers, teams, the planet, and margins. Auchan Poland improved performance across the three pillars: people, planet, profit.