Dive Brief:
- Wakefern Food Corp. has partnered with AI-powered loyalty platform Eagle Eye to expand its loyalty program capabilities, the companies told Grocery Dive last week.
- Having outgrown its legacy point-of-sale-led loyalty technology, Wakefern is deploying Eagle Eye’s loyalty and personalization platform, which is expected to go live in mid-2026.
- Eagle Eye’s platform will process loyalty data and execute promotions so Wakefern’s point-of-sale system can work faster, Darren Caudill, Wakefern’s chief sales officer, said in an interview.
Dive Insight:
Wakefern prioritized picking a loyalty program vendor that could provide a standardized data foundation while allowing for banner-specific flexibility, Caudill said. Wakefern’s larger banners, which have distinct go-to-market strategies, have the opportunity through Eagle Eye to offer points to loyalty members differently than the co-op’s smaller banners, he said.
Eagle Eye’s more centralized platform will allow Wakefern to roll out personalized interactions and promotions as well as gamified components, the companies said. Wakefern’s marketing teams can design, launch and optimize loyalty and personalization initiatives quickly with Eagle Eye’s platform.
Wrangling data is currently a “laborious process” for Wakefern, so Eagle Eye’s system will help manage its customer database more easily, Caudill said.
“Our data is good, but not great,” Caudill said. “We believe their system and how it will allow us to manage customer accounts. Linking those accounts, managing the behaviors of families versus individuals, is going to give us a significantly higher level of engagement to the consumer.”
Eagle Eye will also allow Wakefern to offer thousands more promotions and offers to customers, Caudill said.
“When you want to start delivering 30,000 offers versus 3,000 offers, it stresses the [legacy POS] system,” Caudill said.
Wakefern — the largest retailer-owned supermarket cooperative in the United States — identified its scale and the diverse needs of its co-op members as top considerations when looking at how to improve its loyalty program system, according to Caudill.
Wakefern comprises about 400 supermarkets across nine East Coast states under banners including ShopRite, Gourmet Garage, Fairway Market and Dearborn Market. The co-op’s presence in markets with fierce competition that spans from Walmart to bodegas “has us in a position where it’s important we continue to drive sales,” Caudill said.
While boosting sales is the main focus of the loyalty program changes, data monetization is another avenue the co-op can explore, Caudill said.
“There’s a monetization opportunity there, and we certainly are planning to take advantage of that where we can. I just don’t want us to lose our core mission,” he said. “We’ve seen other grocers go down those paths before … [and] look more aggressively for alternate income sources than just selling groceries to consumers, and they tend to lose their way.”
The partnership will help set Wakefern up for long-term omnichannel growth as customers who shop across a grocer’s brick-and-mortar and online storefronts spend significantly more than those who only buy from one channel, Caudill said.
Wakefern also recently integrated its e-commerce department into its selling organization as it looks to focus on omnichannel growth, he said.
“The customer doesn’t think of [e-commerce] as a separate thing. They think it is integrated with the experience, and so we want to start managing it as an integrated approach,” Caudill said.
The tie-up adds to Eagle Eye’s list of retail partners, which includes Canadian grocer Loblaws, French retailer Carrefour, Winn-Dixie, Giant Eagle and U.K. supermarket chains Asda, Tesco and Morrisons. Last year, Eagle Eye unveiled Smart Rewards, a real-time loyalty and incentive solution that allows shoppers to automatically receive discounts.
