{"id":99384,"date":"2025-08-27T10:01:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T10:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/99384\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T10:01:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T10:01:11","slug":"coles-eyes-ai-to-keep-shelves-stocked-in-next-viral-recipe-trend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/99384\/","title":{"rendered":"Coles eyes AI to keep shelves stocked in next viral recipe trend"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coles Group is hoping AI can play a role in better preparing the retailer and its value chain for the next viral recipe trend, after supermarket shelves were emptied of cottage cheese<\/a> earlier this year.<\/p>\n

\"Coles<\/p>\n

Trending recipes on platforms like TikTok caused a run on cottage cheese and left supermarkets and their suppliers scrambling to meet demand.<\/p>\n

General manager of data and intelligence Caroline O\u2019Brien told the SAP NOW AI Tour event in Melbourne that Coles is moving beyond \u201creally narrow, specific use cases\u201d for AI \u201cin siloed parts of the business\u201d.<\/p>\n

It will instead \u201cprioritise\u201d cross-functional use cases of the technology over the next 12 months, with viral product demand one of the problems that Coles wants to solve.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a national cottage cheese shortage recently – it was some TikTok recipe trend – so in that world, how do we capitalise on social listening and sensing and then bring that into our demand forecasting, informing our supply chain, making sure that we\u2019ve got the right promotions in store? How do we position ourselves into all of that,\u201d O\u2019Brien said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea [is] being able to react and sequence each part of our value chain to drive that opportunity, but also really practically manage that from a customer experience point of view, because if everyone wants to go in and get some cottage cheese because TikTok told them that it\u2019s great, and they go into a Coles store and we don\u2019t have the product on shelf, that\u2019s [a] really core customer experience [problem].<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we think about the supply chain, [we want to] have a supply chain that\u2019s reactive to the demands we\u2019re seeing driven.\u201d<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien – who is six months into her role as data and AI leader at Coles – said the retailer is taking a \u201cconsidered\u201d approach to its use of AI, favouring use cases that enable it to derive a competitive advantage in the market.<\/p>\n

The retailer has grown its data and intelligence team to around 300 staff, supported by vendors including Microsoft, Snowflake, Databricks, Palantir and SAP.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien said the make-up of the team is becoming more software engineering-focused, matching the skills required to work with evolving artificial intelligence technologies.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn building these technologies now versus eight to nine years ago, the profile of the builder is very different,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was very data science-heavy previously \u2026 is now a lot more software engineering-based.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSo for us, we\u2019re thinking about how to get software engineers who have experience with deploying a model, rather than having a data scientist who might have a little bit of software engineering experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just think they can be a lot more flexible and adaptable in this environment and can solve 70 percent of the problems. They can get most of the way there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Coles Group is hoping AI can play a role in better preparing the retailer and its value chain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-99384","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}