Salient and Associated Food Stores Partner to Provide a Solution that Delivers End-to-End Comprehensive Data Collaboration
HORSEHEADS, N.Y., February 9th, 2024 – Salient, a leading provider of analytics for the consumer goods industry, announced today that Associated Foods Stores (AFS), an American retailers cooperative, has selected Salient’s analytics platform to help inform their business decision-making. This collaboration aims to empower AFS with industry-tailored analytics around store-level sales, enabling them to drive business growth in a competitive market.
As a retail cooperative serving nearly 450 independent grocers throughout the Western United States, AFS has always been committed to providing exceptional products and services to its customers. In their pursuit of excellence, AFS recognized the need to harness the power of product sales data and leverage it effectively to gain a competitive edge.
After evaluating several options to determine which analytics provider aligned best with their category management and store management needs, AFS selected Salient as their trusted partner.
“At Associated Food Stores (AFS), we have taken strategic steps to dedicate more resources to shopper data and to use it to drive decision-making, better engage with shoppers and improve overall store profitability,” said Mindy Rich, Vice President of Data Analytics. “AFS selected Salient to build a data sharing platform that will be used by vendor partners, our corporate team and, eventually, our independent grocers.”
With Salient, AFS seeks to measure and improve upon several facets of their business, spanning their corporate-owned and independent member stores. These include:
- Category Management and Product Performance
- End-to-End Supply Chain Collaboration and Data Sharing
- Retail Services and Store level Profitability
- Benchmarking against Peer Groups, Vendors to Category, and Market
“Salient has extensive experience in the grocery and CPG space. Because of their expertise in grocery, they are a natural fit for AFS, both for the wholesale and retail sides of the business,” said Rich. “Their ability to limit users to specific views and process data quickly also weighed into the decision.”
“We’re thrilled to have AFS join our family of more than 150 consumer goods companies who rely on Salient to help guide their strategy and business growth,” said John Amisano, CEO at Salient. “We’ve invested heavily in our high-speed query engine that scales to billions of transactions, making it well-suited for the high-volume consumer goods segments, especially grocery.”
Over the next couple of years, AFS will look to grow their utilization of the solution across multiple areas of the business. Through this expansion, AFS plans to increase alignment around a single system for reporting needs, aiming to increase efficiency and the ease of accessing information.
“While there are many benefits of the platform, our retailers will gain better visibility to their data than ever before. They will have the ability to use the data to make better decisions about how they engage shoppers, make merchandising decisions, and be empowered to drive their businesses in far more strategic ways,” said Roger White, Executive Vice President and COO at AFS.
About Salient
Salient blends guided analysis with data exploration to help CPG companies, wholesalers, and retailers measure and improve profitability. The solution provides category managers, retail services, store management, and many others with easy-to-use facts on distribution and placement opportunities, product movement (at all levels), benchmarked performance and operational efficiency. Learn more: www.salient.com.
Salient Media Contact:
Name: Jim McDermott
Email: JMcDermott@salient.com
Phone: (607) 846-1415
About Associated Food Stores
Associated Food Stores was established in 1940 when 34 independent retailers joined together to battle high supplier costs and competition from large chain stores. That fighting spirit has continued to help the grocery wholesaler grow over the last 75 years. With a focus on independent retailers, AFS has changed the way these retailers operate and allowed them to prosper. AFS currently serves nearly 450 retailers across the Intermountain West. For more information about Associated Food Stores visit: www.afstores.com.