Birdzi's Journey: AI Platform to Automate Grocery Loyalty and Media

BRIDGEWATER, NJ – January 06, 2026 – In an increasingly competitive grocery landscape, retail intelligence firm Birdzi has unveiled a new platform designed to automate the creation of highly personalized shopping experiences. The solution, named Journey, aims to empower regional and national grocers by using artificial intelligence to dynamically guide customers with real-time, behavior-based offers, marking a significant step forward in the industry's push for deeper customer engagement.

Journey is engineered to monitor and react to the entire lifecycle of a shopper. Whether a customer is new, has not shopped in a while, or is exhibiting subtle changes in purchasing habits, the platform is designed to automatically listen and respond with targeted incentives. This move comes as grocers grapple with retaining customer loyalty in an era of price sensitivity and endless choice, seeking technologies that can deliver relevance at scale.

The AI Engine Driving Shopper Loyalty

At the heart of Birdzi's new offering is a sophisticated AI engine that builds upon the company's existing personalization capabilities. For years, grocers using Birdzi's technologies, such as the VISPER (Virtual Personalization and Shopper Engagement) engine, have reported significant returns. The company states that clients using these tools have witnessed an average 30% increase in basket size, a compelling proof point for the power of automated personalization.

Unlike traditional loyalty programs that offer generic points or mass-market digital coupons, Journey promises a more granular and responsive approach. The system analyzes individual shopper data to identify key inflection points and automatically triggers a customized series of offers and communications. For example, a new shopper might receive a welcome series designed to introduce them to the store's private label brands, while a lapsed shopper might be targeted with a high-value offer on a previously favored category to entice them back.

This level of automation allows retailers to move beyond manual campaign segmentation, which is often resource-intensive and slow to react. Instead, the platform creates thousands of unique customer paths simultaneously, a feat impossible to manage through traditional marketing efforts. By leveraging a retailer's entire product catalog, the system can generate strategic offers intended not just to drive a single sale, but to methodically grow customer value over time by increasing trip frequency, retention, and engagement across more store categories.

A New Frontier for Retail Media and CPG Collaboration

Perhaps the most significant strategic implication of Journey is its role as a bridge between grocers and their Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) partners. The solution enters the market as retail media spending is projected to nearly double over the next three years, with some forecasts predicting the U.S. market will exceed $100 billion by 2028. Grocers are rapidly building their own retail media networks (RMNs) to capture a share of this booming advertising spend, but challenges remain.

CPG brands have historically struggled with a lack of direct access to first-party shopper data, making it difficult to measure campaign effectiveness and truly personalize outreach. Birdzi positions Journey as a direct answer to this challenge, claiming it is the first platform to connect shopper behavior and create automated customer journeys directly with CPG partners in a privacy-compliant framework. This allows CPGs to fund targeted campaigns that are executed automatically by the retailer's system when specific shopper behaviors are detected.

“Hampered by the limited data brands can receive from their retail partners, Journey was designed to break down existing barriers to provide true personalization and outreach,” said Shekar Raman, CEO and co-founder of Birdzi. “Journey allows retailers to move from data to insights to action faster in a way that is highly measurable and targeted, effectively bringing intelligent automation to brand and category building.”

For CPG brands, this means gaining deep visibility into customer lifetime value and identifying high-potential segments to boost category performance. For grocers, it creates a powerful, monetizable asset for their retail media networks that offers CPGs a clear return on investment through measurable, incremental sales.

From Data to Action: The Strategic Edge for Grocers

Beyond enhancing marketing, Journey is being positioned as a tool for driving core business efficiency and strategy. The platform's emphasis on automation is designed to free up retailers to focus on higher-level decisions while the system manages the complex execution of personalized engagement.

This value proposition was strongly endorsed by Ron Bonacci, an industry consultant and former grocery executive at Weis Markets, a long-time Birdzi client. “As a retailer with over 30 years of experience across various companies, I can confidently say that Birdzi’s Journey solution is a game-changer,” said Bonacci. “It truly surpasses any past technology, enabling retailers to make swift, automated and results-driven business decisions.”

Bonacci’s endorsement highlights a critical need for grocers: the ability to adapt quickly without massive operational overhauls. He noted that the solution's “rapid implementation allows for remarkable achievements far beyond what older technologies could offer.” This agility is crucial for competing not only with other grocers but with the data-driven personalization perfected by e-commerce giants.

Birdzi's track record with established retailers lends credibility to these claims. For instance, past collaborations have yielded impressive results, with clients like Coborn's reporting a 355% increase in customer retention and Weis Markets achieving an ROI of over 13 times on targeted offers. By automating the process from data analysis to offer delivery, Journey promises to make this level of success more accessible and scalable for a wider range of grocers.

Industry Debut and Market Reception

To formally introduce the new solution, Birdzi is planning a series of demonstrations at major industry events. Journey will first be showcased at NRF 2026: Retail's Big Show in New York City, where it has been selected for the NRF Innovators Showcase, an honor reserved for promising new technologies. Following NRF, the company will also exhibit at FMI Midwinter in Palm Desert and The NGA Show in Las Vegas.

This launch places Birdzi in direct competition with established data science firms like Dunnhumby, but with a distinct focus on integrating automated journey creation with CPG-funded retail media. As the grocery industry continues its digital transformation, the ability to seamlessly merge customer loyalty, personalized marketing, and partner collaboration on a single intelligent platform may well define the next generation of retail leaders.