This interview is brought to you by PriceEasy.
Everyone is talking about the future of AI. What is AI actually doing in convenience retail today?
Raj Golecha, CEO, PriceEasy: AI is already fundamentally changing how convenience retailers operate.
The biggest transformation is that AI is moving beyond analytics. It can connect information across the business, answer complex questions on demand, recommend actions and increasingly take actions on behalf of the retailer.
PriceEasy’s Cortex AI acts as an intelligence layer connecting fuel pricing, store pricing, promotions, inventory, customer behavior and operations. Instead of analyzing each area independently, retailers can make holistic decisions on demand.
More importantly, retailers can now create and train personal AI assistants that can actually perform work for them.
What do you mean by creating a personal AI assistant?
Golecha: Think about how you train a new employee. You explain what to monitor, what action to take, who to contact, when to follow up and when to escalate. Retailers can train AI in a similar way.
For example, you could create a fuel inventory assistant and say: “Whenever inventory falls below 3,000 gallons, contact my wholesaler and request delivery within 24 hours. If they cannot deliver, follow up, evaluate alternatives and escalate based on my instructions.”
Cortex can then continuously monitor the situation and help manage the workflow from beginning to end.
A retailer can create multiple personal AI assistants for different parts of the business. One might monitor fuel inventory and coordinate deliveries. Another could monitor competitors and pricing conditions. Another could analyze store performance and identify opportunities requiring attention.
Because Cortex operates across the PriceEasy ecosystem, these assistants don’t have to work independently. Cortex becomes the intelligence and orchestration layer connecting the different pieces of the business.
The fundamental difference is that traditional software performs predefined functions. AI can be trained around how the retailer wants work to get done.
Say a retailer wants to become more AI-driven. Does that mean it needs to replace its existing technology?
Golecha: No—and this is extremely important. Replacing technology across hundreds or thousands of locations can be expensive, disruptive and painful.
The objective should not be to rip and replace the technology that already works. The much more practical approach is to put an AI intelligence layer on top of the retailer’s existing technology infrastructure.
Fuel pricing systems continue doing their job. POS systems continue processing transactions. Existing store hardware continues operating. Inventory, loyalty and back-office systems continue providing information. Cortex sits above these systems, connecting the information and adding intelligence and action.
That allows retailers to transform an existing technology environment into a much more advanced, AI-driven operating system without replacing the underlying infrastructure.
Why is connecting these different areas so important?
Golecha: Convenience retail has traditionally operated through multiple systems. Fuel pricing may sit in one system, store pricing in another, promotions somewhere else, with POS, inventory and loyalty data in additional systems.
What has historically been missing is the intelligence connecting them.
Instead of simply asking Cortex, “What should my fuel price be?” a retailer can ask: “If I change my fuel price, what happens to volume, margin, customer traffic, fuel-to-store conversion, store sales and ultimately the profitability of the entire location?”
That moves the industry from optimizing individual functions toward optimizing the entire business.
Are there any other ways that you see AI transforming retail?
Golecha: AI isn’t simply helping retailers analyze more data. It is creating new intelligence that previously wasn’t available.
Retailers have historically had access to competitive fuel prices, but getting SKU-level pricing information from competing convenience stores has been extremely difficult. Now we have tools that can create SKU-level competitive pricing intelligence at scale.
Promotions are another great example of AI moving from analysis into execution. Retailers may create excellent promotions, but if the cashier doesn’t communicate them to the customer, much of the opportunity disappears.
PriceEasy’s AI tools can identify opportunities to recommend relevant promotions and help execute the promotion while the customer is standing at the register.
What makes PriceEasy’s approach to AI different?
Golecha: PriceEasy is moving AI beyond analytics. Cortex acts as the intelligence and orchestration layer connecting fuel pricing, store pricing, promotions, inventory, customer behavior and execution. It can answer what happened and why, help determine what should happen next, and help execute the workflow itself.
And importantly, retailers don’t have to replace the technology infrastructure they have spent years building. AI can sit on top of the existing infrastructure and transform it.
That is where I believe the opportunity is today: Take the POS, back-office systems, pricing systems, hardware and operational technology retailers already have, connect them through an intelligent AI layer, and turn the entire environment into a far more connected and advanced AI-driven operation.
The future of convenience retail isn’t about replacing everything with AI. It’s about using AI to make everything you already have dramatically smarter.
