Farmstead Launches New AI-Powered Ordering Program

Farmstead has launched a new program using artificial intelligence (AI) that can save its customers money.

The online grocer’s new Refill & Save program provides customers with recurring discounted orders on staples including milk, eggs, bread, fresh fruit and vegetables. San Francisco-based Farmstead is using highly-reliable AI-powered predictive models to determine demand to avoid overstocks, which will reduce food waste, as well as save time and fuel on delivery routes.

To operate Refill & Save, Farmstead automatically fills up customers’ recurring weekly orders, and shoppers can then add or delete any items for the week, or cancel an order entirely.

“Most households buy many of the same things every time they grocery shop,” said Pradeep Elankumaran, founder and CEO of Farmstead, according to Chain Store Age. “In Farmstead’s case that helps us predict demand, reducing our costs and improving efficiency. In light of that, we were able to reduce our prices on certain staples while still making the business profitable. It’s another way Farmstead is delivering on its mission to make fresh, locally sourced food available to all.”

In a 2017 interview with PYMNTS, Elankumaran noted that Farmstead’s proprietary AI platform allows Farmstead to do things more efficiently than other firms.

Farmstead customers can choose to have fresh food at their doorstep within one hour, by the end of the day, or they can set a weekly recurring order that arrives on any day they choose. The grocer delivers only in San Francisco and the Bay Area, and it offers about 1,000 products.

Elankumaran noted that Farmstead is small for a reason, adding that it is “a very opinionated” company that performs lot of curation offering “category coverage as opposed to SKU coverage.” In fact, the products that Farmstead offers are incredibly local, meaning the company is able to deliver extremely fresh food to its customers.