Supermarkets use free food samples to drive sales and differentiate from competitors, yet the lack of granular oversight means that unsampled food portions are discarded without recovery, creating an invisible waste problem that undermines both sustainability efforts and cost objectives.

Store managers face a trade-off: engaging customers with abundant samples versus controlling waste and cost without transparency into actual usage and leftovers.

No dedicated process or technology exists to monitor the preparation, distribution, and ultimate disposal of sampled food at scale, making it hard to quantify, predict, or divert associated waste.

Operational silos between marketing, inventory, and waste management contribute to this oversight.

Some supermarkets impose arbitrary limits on sample production, or rely on anecdotal staff observations, but such approaches lack accuracy, adaptability, and do not enable waste diversion.

Ad-hoc manual reporting is time-consuming and rarely actionable at scale.