Tesco is placing packaging QR codes on its products as it looks to find ways to improve inventory knowledge, ensure out of date stock doesn’t leave the store, help reduce waste – and achieve a whole lot more in terms of customer experience (CX).
The UK’s largest retailer started a trial at the end of March, working alongside standards organisation GS1 UK which powers the new QR codes and which is talking about the “second barcode revolution” having originally launched the tech in the 1970s.
At Retail Technology Show 2025, which took place at London’s ExCeL on 2-3 April, Tesco supply chain development director Isabela De Pedro provided details of what the project entails to date and where it might go in the future.
Tesco’s priority is to use the QR codes on own-brand items to provide another guardrail to stop out-of-date goods leaving stores. It then wants to use this technology as a way of gaining a better understanding of which products are where so it has a clearer view of trading performance in close to real time.
Later down the line – and De Pedro acknowledged the trial is still in its very early days – the idea is to use the packaging QR codes to improve the CX by giving people more information about product provenance, allergens, and recipe ideas, for example.
“Initially, we want to make sure that, as good as all our store processes are, we have a backstop that no out-of-date products leave our stores, so that’s where we went first,” she explained.
“Where next? Inventory and granularity of inventory is really interesting, particularly when you start to embed day code into the QR codes because you can start to better understand how customers are shopping rather than making assumptions about how they shop, and therefore the products you do and don’t have in a shop.”
De Pedro added: “To be able to execute the customer engagement stuff well takes time and you need a significant number of products to start to leverage the benefit.”
Tesco’s F&F fashion arm is already incorporating Fabacus’s digital product passports – navigated to via QR code – onto its clothing labels, as that sector prepares for new European Union legislation on transparency and circularity set to arrive in 2027.
The supply chain director said suppliers will be interested in the new GS1 UK tech from a traceability perspective as these QR codes will be able to tell the product’s story from origin farm all the way through to the shelf edge. And in the event of emergency product withdrawals, they might be able to help the retailer “trace back quite quickly”.
From a customer perspective, she explained, the tech offers a conduit to talk about nutritional information, origin, recyclability, and perhaps product alternatives.
“If you want three [of a product] but only two are available – can I go online to buy and can the QR code take you and facilitate that?” De Pedro asked, highlighting the future potential of this innovation.
Tesco is planning to ramp up its usage of packaging QR codes methodically and under the guidance of GS1 UK, but De Pedro said: “I certainly would like to think you’ll see this appearing more and more in our shops throughout the course of the year.”
She added: “It’s certainly our intention to make sure our customers better understand the product – we’ve got a real limit on the current packaging and there are so many regulatory things you have to put on there and that gets priority.
“The QR code opens up the door to talk about origin, nutrition, health, alternatives. All of this stuff you can do but we want to be able to do it well hence taking a bit more time on that part.”
[image credit: Green Retail World]
