Challenge 01
Unstable forecasts
Inaccurate, sales-led forecasting and disconnected local planning drive constant changes — and an unstable production plan that’s reworked again and again.
Industry Solution · Food & Beverage
Food & Beverage Supply Chain Planning Software to Deliver Fresher With Less Waste
Probabilistic AI for demand forecasting, perishability-aware inventory optimization, and promotions planning — delivering flawless service with minimal waste across short-shelf-life supply chains, even when demand is volatile and retailers demand perfection.
Overview
In Food and Beverage, You Have to Deliver Flawless Service and Cut Waste — At the Same Time.
Short shelf lives turn forecast error straight into waste. Layer on promotional peaks up to 30× baseline, retailer OTIF penalties, and thousands of SKUs with different expiry dates, and deterministic, monthly S&OP planning locks in the wrong bets — overstocking slow movers into spoilage and write-offs while stocking out of bestsellers during the promotions and peaks that matter most. ToolsGroup’s food and beverage supply chain planning software closes that gap with range-based probabilistic forecasting and decision intelligence that understands seasonality, perishability, and storage constraints — continuously steering demand, supply, and service toward your financial targets to deliver flawless service with minimal waste.
What Food & Beverage Optimization Delivers
Aggregate outcomes across ToolsGroup customers in food and beverage manufacturing and distribution.
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99 %+
Service levels
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30 %
Less obsolescence & waste
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Up to 30 %
Less lost sales
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20 %
More freshness at purchase
Trusted by Food & Beverage Leaders
Why Traditional Planning Breaks in Food and Beverage
When shelf life is short, promotions are constant, and retailers penalize every missed delivery, legacy planning turns food and beverage into firefighting — eroding service, freshness, and margin all at once.
Challenge 02
Service variability & missed OTIF
Overstocks of slow movers tie up working capital, while stockouts during promotions and peaks lose sales — and trigger retailer OTIF chargebacks and lost shelf space.
Challenge 03
Excess & expiration risk
Thousands of SKUs with varying shelf lives and production constraints overwhelm manual processes, turning working capital into spoilage and write-offs.
Challenge 04
Margin pressure
Price erosion, constant promotions, and rising raw-material and energy costs squeeze margins from every side, even as private-label competition intensifies.
Challenge 05
Manual, reactive decisions
Monthly S&OP cycles are too slow for daily volatility; decisions run on outdated data, and firefighting disruptions becomes the everyday operating model.
Purpose-Built Capabilities for Food and Beverage
Every capability runs on Decion, ToolsGroup’s agentic decision intelligence platform — demand, supply, and inventory planning unified in one self-steering system, with pre-built ERP and WMS connectors.
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Probabilistic demand forecasting
AI-powered probabilistic forecasting at the daily SKU-location level that creates stable plans even with fluctuating retailer and consumer demand and short shelf lives.
Probabilistic Demand Forecasting : Probabilistic demand forecasting -
Perishability-aware MEIO
Multi-echelon inventory optimization that understands seasonality, perishability, and delivery and storage constraints — maximizing freshness and service while cutting waste and expiry.
Multi-Echelon Inventory Optimization : Perishability-aware MEIO -
Constraint-aware production & supply planning
Integrated production and supply planning that models all constraints — from lead times and truck capacity to lot sizes, co-manufacturing limits, and BOMs — for feasible plans.
Supply Planning : Constraint-aware production & supply planning -
Response planning for volatile demand
Re-plan in-week when promos overperform, yields miss, or weather moves demand. Balance service against shelf life and waste before inventory ages out — not at next month's meeting.
S&OE and Response Planning : Response planning for volatile demand -
Inventory-aware promotions optimization
AI-driven uplift prediction and inventory-aware promo, pricing, and channel allocation — driving promo ROI without stockouts in some regions and excess in others.
Promo Optimization : Inventory-aware promotions optimization -
Service-driven replenishment
Automated, service-driven replenishment tuned to retail OTIF windows — keeping shelves full without over-ordering perishables into spoilage.
Replenishment : Service-driven replenishment
The forecasting problem
Why Deterministic Forecasting Fails in Food and Beverage
Traditional forecasting is deterministic — a single number per SKU, with static safety stock. That works for steady demand. In food and beverage, demand is anything but. Promotions drive peaks up to 30× baseline, seasons and trends swing demand, and frequent launches and reformulations erase forecast history — while short shelf lives turn every forecast error into spoilage. A single average can’t model that, so you either overstock into waste and write-offs or stock out during the promotion or peak that mattered most — and take a retailer OTIF penalty for it.
Probabilistic planning models the full range of demand — including promotional uplift and perishability windows — instead of one fragile number. It produces stable plans that protect both service and freshness — the foundation Decion builds on, across perishability-aware inventory optimization, promotions planning, and agentic AI.
Traditional planning
01 Single forecast
02 Fixed safety stock
Spoilage + stockouts
Probabilistic planning
01 Range of demand
02 Freshness-aware plan
03 Optimal inventory
Higher service + less waste
Featured analyst recognition
Read the Gartner report Recognized by Gartner for Managing Supply Chain Uncertainty
In the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Supply Chain Planning Solutions, 2025, ToolsGroup is noted for the strength of its probabilistic approach to managing demand and supply uncertainty — the core challenge facing food and beverage planners.
Also recognized: 4.5★ Gartner Peer Insights
If You Make or Move It Fresh, It’s Built for You
The hard part of food and beverage planning — perishability, promotional volatility, retailer OTIF pressure, thousands of short-life SKUs — is the same whatever you produce. A few sectors where we have customers today:
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Dairy & chilled
Highly perishable, promotion-heavy ranges planned across refrigerated networks and tight freshness windows.
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Plant-based & alternative proteins
Fast-growing, new-category producers forecasting volatile demand and scaling through rapid expansion.
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Specialty & dietary foods
Gluten-free, infant, and dietary producers balancing strict quality, freshness, and frequent new launches.
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Breads & Pastries
Bakeries and pastry producers planning ultra-short shelf lives, daily freshness, and promotion-driven demand peaks.
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Ambient & packaged foods
Pasta, jams, and shelf-stable FMCG ranges managing promotions, private-label pressure, and broad SKU mixes.
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Beverages & spirits
Coffee, spirits, and drinks producers optimizing lean production and availability across global markets.
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Foodservice & QSR
Quick-service and foodservice networks keeping ingredients fresh and available across high-volume locations.
Don't see yours? If you plan perishable, promotion-driven products against retailer service commitments, the challenge is the same — and so is the fit.
Food & Beverage Leaders Who Deliver Fresher With Less Waste
Customer proof from operations spanning dairy, specialty foods, and ambient packaged foods.
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Granarolo
Italy's largest dairy group plans 34,000 item–promotion combinations against demand spikes of 30× — from firefighting shelf life to forecasting it.
- 95% Forecast Accuracy, Fresh Milk
- −50% Inventory
- -50% Delivery Time
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Dr Schär
341 warehouses, 9 markets, one gluten-free range with days of shelf life — now planned end to end without a human in the loop.
- 100% of SKUs Planned Autonomously
- 70% Fully Automated, Zero Touch
- +3% Forecast Accuracy
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Grupo Gallo
Spain's biggest pasta maker — and Iberia's main Italian-pasta distributor — rebuilt planning around constant promos and rush orders, from reactive to demand-driven.
- 99% Customer Service Level
- −10 days Inventory Coverage
Food & Beverage Leaders in Their Words
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We went from a time-consuming manual planning to full focus on optimizing. Now we can plan even further ahead and our next goal is to get a "GPS-function" for planning, we will tell it where we want to go and it will draw the map.
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The most valuable capability was the simplicity in which ToolsGroup addresses complexity.
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One of the clear premises for us and conveyed to ToolsGroup was that the technology should be adapted to our processes and way of working.
Go Deeper on Food & Beverage Planning
Analyst reports, guides, case studies, and webinars on probabilistic forecasting, perishability-aware MEIO, and promotional planning.
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Optimize Food Supply Chain With AI-Driven Planning
Optimize food supply chain success with AI. See how a top distributor cut inventory by 7% and kept 90%+ service levels during peak days.
Read more -
Heura
Heura leverages AI-driven digital transformation to power faster decision-making and future-focused business growth.
Read more -
ABC Fine Wine & Spirits
After implementing ToolsGroup Retail Planning solutions, ABC Fine Wine & Spirits reduced lost sales and inventory costs while increasing productivity thanks to smarter forecasts and better reporting.
Read more -
Pyrénées
Food company transforms supply chain complexity and volatility into better service and healthy inventory levels
Read more -
Cerealis
Food company transforms supply chain complexity and volatility into better service and healthy inventory levels
Read more -
Nordic Food Company
The company struggled to balance the conflicting demands of high availability and capital tied to inventory. They turned to ToolsGroup Demand Planning and Inventory Optimization.
Read more -
McDonald’s Mesoamérica
McDonald's Mesoamerica, while thriving in the implementation of in-store kiosks, struggled with developing an effective planning process. This setback, along with rapid expansion and a competitive market, inhibited productivity and lowered service levels. Integrating ToolsGroup effected positive and rapid change for McDonalds.
Read more -
Multi-National Coffee Bar Company
This company’s real-time sales data wasn’t being used for replenishment. Because there was no system in place, the team relied on manual spreadsheet based estimates.
Read more -
The Absolut Company
Absolut was rapidly growing, causing complexities to surface. With forecasting and production planning being performed by one planner, they needed the help of the ToolsGroup solution.
Read more
Food & Beverage Supply Chain Planning FAQ
Questions buyers ask about food & beverage planning software.
What is food and beverage supply chain planning software?
Food and beverage supply chain planning software forecasts demand, optimizes inventory, and plans supply for perishable, promotion-driven products. Unlike generic ERP planning, it models short shelf lives, seasonality, promotional peaks, and retailer OTIF requirements — using range-based probabilistic forecasting instead of single-point averages.
How is probabilistic forecasting different from deterministic for perishables?
Deterministic forecasting predicts a single number and breaks under promotional peaks and volatility, leaving you overstocked into spoilage or short during peaks. Probabilistic forecasting models the full range of demand — including promotional uplift — so plans protect both service and freshness.
How does it reduce food waste and spoilage?
By tuning stock-to-service curves to perishability and freshness windows, the system reduces excess before it becomes waste — typically cutting product obsolescence and waste by around 30% while maintaining service.
What is multi-echelon inventory optimization (MEIO) for food and beverage?
MEIO optimizes inventory across every tier — plants, DCs, depots, and points of sale — while accounting for seasonality, perishability, and storage constraints, positioning stock to maximize freshness at delivery and minimize expiry.
How does it integrate with ERP systems like SAP?
Decion connects through pre-built connectors and APIs for SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, and other ERP and WMS systems. It syncs demand, inventory, and production data and runs alongside existing systems rather than replacing them.
How does it handle promotions and demand peaks?
AI-driven uplift prediction models promotional demand — which can peak many times baseline — and inventory-aware promo and channel allocation drives promo ROI without causing stockouts in some regions and excess in others.
How does it help hit retail OTIF and avoid chargebacks?
Range-based probabilistic modeling plus automated supply balancing and replenishment tuned to OTIF windows improves on-time-in-full delivery — reducing retailer penalties and protecting shelf space and scorecard performance.
What results do food and beverage companies see?
Results are customer-specific. Granarolo cut inventory over 50%, halving working capital, while holding 95% service in key categories; Hero España reached 98% service while reducing inventory 20%; Grupo Gallo reached 99% customer service while freeing 10 days of safety stock.
How long does it take to see results?
Results vary by operation, but food and beverage teams often see impact within months. Phased rollouts can start with demand forecasting, promotions planning, or inventory optimization, then expand across the network.
How does it handle short shelf life and expiration dates?
The system plans with freshness windows built in, optimizing stock-to-service curves so perishable items move before they age — reducing spoilage, write-offs, and end-of-life markdowns while protecting availability.
How does it forecast new product introductions (NPIs) and reformulations?
AI-powered NPI forecasting uses attribute-based modeling to predict launch demand without history, and supersession logic phases items in and out smoothly — reducing the chronic shortage or costly excess that often accompanies launches.
What is S&OP software for food and beverage?
S&OP software — and broader integrated business planning (IBP) — aligns demand, supply, production, and financial plans on a continuous cadence. ToolsGroup converts demand into feasible plans and enables collaboration across sales, operations, and procurement.
Which food and beverage sectors use it?
Companies across dairy and chilled, plant-based and alternative proteins, specialty and dietary foods, ambient and packaged foods, beverages and spirits, and foodservice and QSR — anywhere perishability and promotions meet strict retailer service commitments.
Ready to Deliver Fresher With Less Waste?
Talk to a specialist who understands perishable, promotion-driven supply chains.