Plum Market, ranked among the top 10 USA Regional Operators by Progressive Grocer, partnered with LEAFIO AI to streamline merchandising operations and improve store efficiency.
With the help of the LEAFIO Shelf Efficiency solution, Plum Market optimized its merchandising processes and has achieved impressive results, including three times faster store opening preparation and improved productivity of the employees involved in the merchandising activities.
Challenges Plum Market faced before the implementation
Scaling a retail chain often presents challenges such as resource limitations, inconsistent processes, and a lack of advanced tools for strategic planning. For Plum Market, these challenges also included:
- Extended time frames for new store openings—it typically took two weeks to stock shelves before a launch.
- Difficulty standardizing merchandising processes across multiple locations, particularly with a multinational workforce requiring an intuitive and universal communication tool.
- The need for advanced analytics to support informed decision-making and effective planning.
“We’re always looking for ways to innovate, and our partnership with LEAFIO has enabled automated planogram generation and optimization, execution control, and shelf space performance improvement,” said Matt Jonna, Plum Market co-founder and CEO. “This is exciting technology that enhances our guests’ shopping experience.”
Initial implementation results
LEAFIO Shelf Efficiency has become an essential guide for Plum Market’s managers, the primary source of planograms and relevant analytics, and an indispensable tool for new store openings.
The software integrated seamlessly with Plum Market’s AI ordering system. This integration allowed the team to indicate availability at locations and manage minimum and maximum quantities to maintain fully stocked sets efficiently.
Among the major instant effects:
Long-Term Outcomes: Scaling Smart, Growing Fast
Over the past three years, LEAFIO Shelf Efficiency has not only optimized day-to-day operations at Plum Market but also supported the company’s broader scaling strategy. The software enabled a structured, location-by-location rollout, starting with the Florida store and expanding across Michigan. By scanning existing sets and recreating them in LEAFIO AI, Plum Market quickly began leveraging analytics to identify underperformers, adjust facings, and streamline assortments.
As the chain grew, this approach provided a consistent foundation for expansion. The team shifted from reactive shelf management to a proactive model, developing a reset calendar to review and update key categories in regular intervals. This allowed for better vendor coordination, minimized disruption from new product introductions, and ensured that every store benefited from uniform merchandising improvements.
Impact on Dairy and Grocery Categories
The Like-for-Like analysis compares all key merchandising KPIs from Q1 2023 to Q4 2024 to assess improvements in planogram execution and shelf efficiency.
Dairy Category: More Sales, Less Waste
With better planogram automation and shelf control, supermarkets have seen:
- Sales increase of 11.4%
- Profit growth of 12.3%, driven by optimized placement and reduced overcrowding
- Sales per foot up by 6%, reflecting smarter space utilization
- Faster stock rotation, minimizing waste, and improving shelf turnover
In one store, reworking the dairy shelf layout led to an 11.4% increase in sales and a 7.8% rise in profit per foot, demonstrating the value of making high-demand items better organized and easier to find.
Grocery Category: Bigger Wins from Small Changes
Even small improvements in the broad grocery category delivered strong results:
- Total sales rose 5.7%, boosting overall revenue
- Profits increased by 5.3%, despite slightly lower unit sales
- Sales per facing width improved by 2.5%, indicating better product visibility
By repositioning bestsellers at eye level and grouping complementary products (like pasta and sauces), stores saw improved customer engagement and easier purchasing decisions.
These findings emphasize that selling smarter means presenting products better as well as stocking based on data-driven insights.
Conclusion
The Like-for-Like analysis across 2023–2024 shows that LEAFIO AI’s Visual Merchandising Software has had a measurable impact on sales, profitability, and shelf efficiency in both Dairy and Grocery categories.
Six supermarkets proved that visual merchandising is more than aesthetics—it’s performance:
- Customers find what they want faster
- Stores sell more of what counts
- Less waste means higher profits
These results affirm the importance of precise planogram execution and data-driven shelf management in driving both top-line and bottom-line growth.
Continuous Support
Ongoing collaboration with the LEAFIO Customer Success Department ensures continuous improvement through:
- Monitoring and analyzing KPIs
- Optimizing processes based on feedback
- Leveraging new features from regular software updates
Empowering Retail Growth
LEAFIO Shelf Efficiency has become an essential daily tool for Plum Market and the cornerstone of their merchandising strategy. The LEAFIO AI team is confident that the partnership will continue to support Plum Market’s growth, delivering ongoing value and innovation.
"A flexible approach and commitment to excellence is at the core of everything we do. Plum Market employees had the opportunity to experience our product during the implementation phase and appreciated its functionality and usability. But more valuable, they also provided input on the customization of reports, which would allow them to cope with the challenges of a rapidly growing network even more efficiently, and us - to make our product even more client-oriented. This is why it's so vital for us to get constant feedback from our users,” says Andrew Max, co-founder of LEAFIO Inc.
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