Smartway, a France-based food waste technology provider, completed deployment of its artificial intelligence-powered waste management system across 39 Vallarta Supermarkets locations in six months, marking the company’s entry into the North American market.
The rollout included 34 stores in five weeks across center store grocery, deli, frozen and dairy departments. The deployment followed a three- to four-month pilot phase with five stores and a month of preparation and planning.
Smartway’s solution uses on-board AI to detect products approaching expiration dates. The system enables rapid and targeted identification of products requiring processing, improving operations compared to previous setups.
“To have a real global impact on food waste, it is unthinkable not to address the United States,” said Christophe and Paul-Adrien Menez, co-founders of Smartway.
“This country concentrates both colossal surpluses and pockets of food insecurity. The stakes there are immense. By establishing an initial partnership with Vallarta, a player as committed as it is emblematic in California, we are taking a key step in our international development, demonstrating that transformation is possible, even on a large scale.”
The United States wasted 91 million tons of food in 2023, while 18 million households experienced food insecurity, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.The retail sector accounts for 20 percent of waste, often due to poor management of dates, aesthetic criteria and unsuitable tools. On shelves, losses exceed profits generated.
Federal authorities aim to reduce waste by 50 percent by 2030, and several states have passed legislation. Just 13 percent of retailers are equipped with AI-based tools, despite strong investment intentions.
“We had a previous solution for this, with more complexity. Many things had to be taken care of manually,” said Rodrigo Jimenez, director of shelf edge at Vallarta Supermarkets. “With Smartway, everything is running smoothly from the very first time we went to the first store.”
The U.S. team worked in stores, training Vallarta employees, demonstrating benefits and ensuring integration into daily workflows.
Vallarta’s headquarters gained real-time visibility into daily store operations, addressing the problem of store teams checking boxes without genuine engagement.
Survey responses from store teams showed 4.85 out of 5 for adoption, 4.7 out of 5 for communication quality and 4.6 out of 5 for installation and setup.
User feedback highlighted ease of use, with comments including, “Quick and easy to understand the program. Very user friendly,” and “The program is very easy to manage and to implement to our daily routines.”
About Smartway
Smartway, founded in 2012, pioneered Zero Waste departments in France, where products approaching expiration are consolidated and sold at discounted prices.
The company developed an all-in-one application enabling rapid, automated detection of products requiring markdown while ensuring no expired products remain on shelves.
Smartway’s proprietary AI automatically calculates optimal discount rates for each product to maximize recovery value. The technology is deployed in 12 countries. Since its creation, Smartway has saved more than 420 million products and delivered $175 million in additional profit to retailers.
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