CASE STUDY: ALBERT HEIJN Albert Heijn, a 138-year-old Dutch grocery chain with five million weekly customers, has used Microsoft Azure AI Foundry to build an AI assistant that reduces the time spent on food shopping and meal planning Smarter shopping When customers open the Albert Heijn app today, they’re greeted by a helpful AI assistant named Steijn. Built using Microsoft Azure AI Foundry and powered by Azure OpenAI in Foundry Models, Steijn is more than a chatbot; it is a smart cooking and shopping companion. Steijn has access to over 20,000 Albert Heijn recipes, complete with nutritional information and cooking tips like how to cut an avocado, and is designed to offer tailored suggestions to customers. The assistant can also recommend meals based on photos of the ingredients customers already have at home, helping them to reduce waste by cooking more creatively. This innovative solution is the latest digital step forward for Albert Heijn, a 138-year-old Dutch grocery chain that operates 1,200 stores and serves five million weekly customers across the Netherlands. The retailer wanted to offer customers an experience that went beyond shopping with a digital helper that could support their daily meal decisions in a fast and personalised way. The aim was to seamlessly integrate the AI assistant into the existing Albert Heijn app so customers could rely on it to reduce stress, save time and support healthier habits. “Throughout the entire food chain at Albert Heijn, we want to reduce food waste by 50 per cent by 2030,” says Sjoerd Holleman, senior vice president of strategy, product and analytics at Albert Heijn. “We’re doing everything we can to achieve that.” The implementation of the AI assistant presented both technical and creative challenges. The foundation for Steijn came from Allderhande – Albert Heijn’s long-running food magazine – which provided an archive of recipes to inform the AI. Customers can use Steijn to take photos of the interior of their fridge and the AI assistant suggests recipes based on the contents it can recognise 158 Photo: Trifilm for Microsoft
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzQ1NTk=