A supermarket deep in rural Germany had a problem. Far from the ample workforce of the nearest city, the shop was staffed largely by local teenagers still at school. The kids were motivated but inexperienced, says Avik Mukhija, co-founder of retail tech startup Freshflow. He declines to reveal the shop’s exact location. When ordering fresh produce each day, the adolescent employees tended to over-stock for fear of running out of fruit and veg. That led to unnecessary waste as some unsold produce inevitably went bad in store. But then the shop’s managers turned to a...
