Chestnut Supermarket: 8,000 labels live in two weeks

The problem: 8,000 tags, moving prices, one team

Chestnut Supermarket runs a full-line store on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn where prices genuinely move — weekly circular changes, supplier cost updates, markdowns, and promotions across thousands of facings. Every one of those changes used to mean the same thing: print, cut, walk the aisle, swap the paper tag, and hope nothing was missed before the next price-accuracy check.

At 8,000 labeled facings, tag maintenance had become a standing job. Price changes queued up around the staff hours available to post them — not the other way around — and every delayed batch was a shelf that disagreed with the register.

The rollout: two weeks, no closed aisles

Retail Digitals surveyed the store, matched rails and mounts to Chestnut’s existing gondolas and cases, and installed section by section while the store traded normally. Labels were bound to products as each aisle went up, with prices flowing from the store’s existing item file — so every aisle went live the same day it was railed.

Fourteen days after the first rail went on, all 8,000 electronic shelf labels were live: e-paper displays across grocery shelving, coolers, and cases, updating from the cloud platform in seconds.

The result: pricing became a back-office click

Price changes at Chestnut now post storewide in seconds from the back office. The weekly circular no longer consumes a shift of tag-swapping; markdowns happen when the decision is made, not when someone is free to walk the aisle; and the shelf matches the register by construction — the two are fed by the same system.

The recovered time is the number the team feels most: roughly a full staff-day every week, redirected from label maintenance to the floor. Over a year, that’s ~50 staff-days — before counting eliminated tag printing or the margin protected by on-time markdowns. Run your own store’s math in the ROI calculator.

Why it worked

Three decisions made this rollout smooth: installing on the store’s existing shelving (rails, hooks, and cooler mounts — no refits), going live aisle-by-aisle instead of a big-bang cutover, and one accountable vendor for hardware, software, installation, and ongoing support — US-based, reachable, and on the hook for the whole system.