New AR App Helps Food Retailers Visualize the Opportunities to Transform Checkout Sales and Profitability with Phononic’s Innovative Solid-State Freezer

Phononic, a global leader in solid-state cooling and heating technology, announced that it has partnered with Extality, a leading developer of mobile virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), to create the first photo-realistic AR app for food and beverage professionals. The Imagine app allows store owners and brands alike to project a virtual image of Phononic’s recently-released F200 Merchandising Freezer into their retail environment using the camera on a smart phone – helping them to immediately visualize the opportunities to grow sales throughout the store.

Phononic’s F200 is built with a sustainable, compact, and compressor-free design that allows it to be placed anywhere in a retail environment — unlike traditional freezers, whose compressors require specialized and limited placement options. Phononic’s approach allows food retailers to bring fresh and frozen foods directly to customers at checkout, mid-aisle, end-caps, or anywhere throughout the store.

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“As the first solid-state freezer ever brought to market, Phononic’s F200 is so unique that it can be difficult for people to imagine placement without a visual aid,” said Mick Wilcox, CMO at Phononic. “Extality’s innovative approach to image mapping and design allows us to bring the F200 directly to food professionals using the power of AR and be confident that it is an accurate representation of our product in their environment. By using the app, retailers can reimagine placement for high-margin products, and test different deployments and branding in real-time.”

Completely photo-realistic and perfectly scaled to size, the Imagine app is a leap forward in AR/VR product marketing. Interactive functionality allows the user to visualize product placement inside the freezer, and cycle through custom exterior branding options. The app also delivers built-in opportunities to share content, allowing store owners to take a photograph of potential placements to share with brand innovators. Using the Imagine app, grocers and convenience stores can now experience the potential of dynamic product placement in their real-world environment, before even purchasing the product.

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“Up until recently, AR had not progressed to the point where it could be reliably used to test both fit and function of a specific product in high detail, and we had never seen a successful demonstration of the technology in the food and beverage vertical,” said Arash Keshmirian, co-founder at Extality. “We are proud to partner with Phononic to help retailers reimagine dynamic product placement with AR, and ultimately drive more valuable in-store experiences for shoppers.”

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