Opinionated Intelligence
for Grocery teams
Separate basket-builders from margin-drainers
Which deli items are dragging our margin?
Rotisserie chicken has the thinnest margin in the deli — about 18,000 units a week at roughly break-even, well below the department average.
Powered by Sundial’s Root Cause Analysis™
Mark down fresh before it’s waste
Which fresh items should we mark down today?
Three produce items are tracking to leave a lot of units unsold at expiry — mark them down now, and only in the slower stores.
The Open Nature organic strawberries have 4 days of shelf life left and are selling ~30% below the pace they need to clear at full price in ~90 stores. A 25% markdown now recovers ~60% of the at-risk value; wait and most of it hits the dumpster. In your fast stores they clear at full price — leave those alone.
The proof behind it
The last few times this SKU tracked this far behind pace, an early day-4 markdown recovered ~60% of the value — and the week it was held at full price recovered almost none.
The last comparable weeks for this SKU
| Comparable past week | Days to expiry | Action taken | Value recovered |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 weeks ago | 4 left | Marked down day 4 | ~62% |
| 6 weeks ago | 4 left | Marked down day 4 | ~58% |
| 9 weeks ago | 4 left | Held full price | ~15% |
Spot patterns across stores
Is sparkling water softening everywhere, or just some stores?
Just a cluster — and it's not 58 separate store problems. 58 stores are losing volume and share one thing the other 300 don't.
Every affected store had a hard-discounter open within two miles in the last two quarters; the unaffected stores didn't. Same category, opposite trajectory — it's a competitive price-gap response, not a demand or planogram problem. Answer it with a targeted price and pack move in those 58 stores, not a chain-wide cut that gives away margin in the 300 healthy ones.
Know if private label is
growing the category
Is Signature SELECT sparkling water growing the category or just stealing from national brands?
Mostly incremental — but not in every pack size.
At the 12-pack it's ~70% incremental: it's pulling in new category households, and total category dollars are up, so expand its facings. At single-serve it's the opposite — ~80% is shoppers switching off the higher-margin national brand you also profit from, so hold there rather than growing it.
One source of truth,
every team aligned
Merchandising says the yogurt reset worked, but Finance says margin fell — who's right?
Both — they're reading different points in the same flow.
Units and category sales rose after the reset (merchandising's number), but blended margin fell because the mix shifted to promoted and private-label facings (finance's number) — reconciled on one set of daily numbers, each team drilling into the lever it owns. The same first-party measurement is what proves ad incrementality to your CPG partners in the retail-media network.
One connected base — the yogurt reset
Units sold
↑ +6%
Blended margin
↓ −2%
Gap = mix shifted to promoted & private-label facings · reconciled on the same daily numbers
Each team drills into what it owns
Category Management
Assortment & shelf
Store Ops
In-stock & execution
Pricing
Price & markdown
Finance
Margin & mix
Insights
Performance & issue spotting
Retail Media
Ad incrementality for CPG partners
& so much more....
For data teams that need
more than a chatbot.
Applied AI team
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