Consumer app with shelf stockout reporting for Molinos Río de la Plata

Molinos Río de la Plata distributes across more than five thousand sales points nationwide: national and independent supermarkets, self service stores, grocers, wholesalers, wine shops and Horeca. It already ran internal apps for its sales force, routing and merchandisers.

What was missing was not another internal tool: it was a consumer channel that also returned what the company cannot see from inside, which is what happens at the shelf.

And those two goals usually get built separately.

• No direct channel: the relationship with the consumer ran entirely through the point of sale.
• The shelf is a blind spot: a stockout in one specific store goes undetected until it hits sales.
• Give before asking: an app that only asks for data does not get used; it has to serve whoever opens it.

With five thousand sales points, no field team covers what the consumers already standing there do.

An app was built that works both as a loyalty tool and as a stock and stockout sensor, grounded in the company sales point and product master.

The roadmap was laid out in two stages: utility first, loyalty second.

What serves the consumer

• Catalog by category and by suitable for attributes, such as celiac and vegetarian.
• Search by text or barcode scan, with nutritional information, videos and user ratings.
• Store module: search by chain, province, locality or geolocation.

What the app returns

• Stock lookup, stockout reporting, store rating, surveys and photo upload.
• Back end centralizing best rated products and stores, most active users and products with most stockouts.
• Bulk loading from the master of over 5,000 sales points and from the brand catalog.

The second stage: loyalty

• Step by step recipes with ingredient filters and favorites.
• Gamification with points redeemable for QR coupons at the store.
• Geolocated push notifications for launches and special dates, and augmented reality on packaging.

Architecture and technology

• Native Android and iOS app in React Native, from a single codebase.
• Back end in Symfony with API Platform on PHP 7, relational database and AWS infrastructure.

Learn more about mobile app development.

The company added a consumer channel that also returns what it cannot see from inside.

Starting point

• Internal apps for sales force, routing and merchandisers, with no direct consumer channel.
• Shelf stockouts detectable only once they hit sales.

Results

• Master of over 5,200 sales points across 10 regions integrated into the app.
• Catalog of around 60 brands and product lines.
• Native Android and iOS app from a single codebase.
• Admin panel with product and store rankings, most active users and products with most stockouts.

Strategic impact

• Reporting is done by whoever is already standing at the shelf, a coverage no field team matches.
• The app gives before it asks: without the first stage utility, the second stage data never arrives.