Unilever’s AI-enabled Freezers Revolutionize Ice Cream Sales

Ice cream is the ultimate on-the-go treat. With a fleet of 3 million ice cream freezer cabinets strategically placed in shops, airports, and supermarkets worldwide, Unilever is effectively leveraging technology like AI (Artificial intelligence) to meet consumer demand.

“To win those impulse sales, our brands need to be available at the right place and the right time,” says Sarosh Hussain, Ice Cream’s Head of Digital Selling Systems.

“For example, if a customer breaks their journey at a petrol station to buy a Magnum and the freezer is out of stock, there’s no second chance, the sale’s lost.”

Rolling out AI across the freezer fleet

Most of the company’s ice cream brands are sold via distributors who have significant numbers of retailers to serve.

Ensuring the retailers who host these freezers always have bestsellers in stock was a key driver in equipping ice cream cabinets with AI.

Work is underway to add the tech to 30% of their top-selling ice cream cabinets for priority markets. To date, 100,000 freezers have been fitted with the technology. “We’re aiming to reach 350,000 in the next two years,” says Sarosh.

Smart freezers restocking

The software in each freezer unit is carefully positioned only to take photos of the stock inside the freezer rather than general images of the shop.

The images are periodically taken and automatically sent to the cloud, where they’re analyzed by AI trained to identify only Unilever’s 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 are looking at our stock every day,” Sarosh says. It also means the distributor knows precisely what their freezer needs from the data whenever a retail outlet asks for stock.

Winning sales with actionable data

So far, the uptick in retail orders and sales has been significant, thanks to data from Unilever’s AI-enabled freezers.

“There is no one size fits all. It varies from country to country,” says Sarosh. “But we have seen incremental growth that ranges from 8% in Turkey to 12% in the US and up to 30% in Denmark.”

In Hungary where almost 10% of its freezer fleet has been AI-enabled this summer, work has also been done to integrate the freezer’s system with those used by distributors.

As well as seeing the retailer’s regular ice cream order, distributors receive an order recommendation based on images and AI analysis of the stock levels in the cabinet.

The response from both distributors and retailers to these ‘recommendations’ has been positive. So far, close to 5% of orders have been generated from the AI system’s input this ice cream season.

Related Article: Unilever Will Exit Ice Cream Business, Cutting 7,500 Jobs

Upskilling sales teams and driving cost-efficiencies

“The data is also helping upskill our sales teams by providing them with insights that allow them to get to know their businesses better to cross or upsell and make their calls more productive and proactive.

“Knowing what stock needs to be replenished before going into an outlet means the time usually taken up by the order process can be used on tasks like new business development and merchandising,” Sarosh adds.

And these aren’t the only benefits. Every ice cream order is fulfilled by refrigerated vans. “If you have a more accurate understanding of which customer wants what, distributors can plan their tertiary route and distribute to the outlets efficiently and more cost-effectively,” he says.

Aligning data with marketing

Big data from Unilever’s freezer fleet will also give them clearer insights into the performance of new product launches as well as marketing campaigns.

“By analyzing this data, we should be able to understand if our ice cream brand’s above-the-line campaigns have had a positive correlation on freezer sales and stock.

“We’ll be able to compare freezer sales from previous seasons to determine if new products are adding value or cannibalising our core, and have the insights to reassess promotion planning and reforecast accordingly,” Sarosh says.

Big data, big opportunities for the future

Ensuring availability and share of shelves is just the start of what Unilever’s AI-enabled freezers can do.

“If 350,000 of our freezer fleet are AI-enabled, we’ll have a large enough data set to provide analytics on product visibility and supply chain strategy. And we’ll be able to grow our ice cream sales by serving our shoppers better than ever before.”