Enhancing Veritas expansion strategy using big data and artificial intelligence

Briefing

Uncertainty, market saturation, and internal cannibalisation caused by overlapping catchment areas all make business growth a complex challenge, particularly when expansion decisions are driven by intuition alone.

Against this backdrop, an increasing number of companies are turning to technology to guide their expansion strategies. Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are opening the door to data-driven decision-making. Veritas, Spain’s leading organic supermarket chain, is one such company that has embraced this approach.

To support its growth strategy, Veritas selected InSite, the location intelligence solution developed by Nommon, to enable safe and intelligent expansion across Spain. InSite allows Veritas to identify high-potential areas for growth and forecast sales by analysing key factors such as footfall, traffic, and the location of both its own stores and those of competitors.

Solution

Veritas currently operates close to 100 stores, each adapted to its surrounding environment. These range from units located in shopping centres and retail parks to stores in city centres. While all locations share a strong commitment to organic, sustainable, and socially responsible food, the performance drivers of each site vary significantly depending on local conditions. To continue expanding successfully, the supermarket chain required a solution capable of accurately assessing how existing stores are performing and how new locations might perform under different circumstances.

InSite is a decision-support tool that uses big data and AI to help businesses such as Veritas define their commercial expansion strategies. With built-in sales forecasting capabilities, the platform delivers tailored recommendations on store openings, closures, and relocations, taking into account both environmental factors and the specific characteristics of the retailer.

How does it work?

This geomarketing platform leverages data from Mobility Insights and Population Insights, Nommon’s market leading solutions for the analysis of population mobility and presence mobility based on anonymised mobile network data. InSite draws on this information to gain a detailed understanding of people’s behaviour within a given area, enabling accurate predictions as to whether opening a store would be viable, and which services should be included to maximise performance.

Beyond mobility and presence data, InSite generates a comprehensive analysis that combines a wide range of geoindicators, including competitor locations, existing stores, retail attractiveness, and the socioeconomic profile of the area. This holistic approach allows performance to be predicted with precision, ensuring that no critical factor is left to chance.

Which location will generate the highest sales? What type of customers frequent the area? How does footfall vary throughout the day, week or year? Is the area already saturated, or does it provide a real opportunity for growth? Would home delivery be a valuable service in this location?

These are just some of the questions that InSite is able to answer, supporting Veritas not only in defining its expansion strategy, but also in developing highly effective, audience-specific marketing plans.

The project was delivered in five key stages:

1. Strategy co-creation between Veritas and Nommon.
2. Calibration of sales forecasting models.
3. Calibration of cannibalisation models.
4. Implementation of the SaaS platform.
5. Ongoing monitoring and personalised support.

Outcomes

In line with its mission to bring organic food to more households and promote a more conscious and healthier consumption model, Veritas has relied on InSite as a key pillar of its expansion strategy since 2024. Over the past year, the organic supermarket chain has used the solution to assess numerous potential locations across Spain.

Thanks to the prior collaborative work between Veritas and Nommon, InSite is fully tailored to the retailer’s specific needs, incorporating all the variables that are critical to its business strategy. Moreover, as each new store opening inevitably impacts the existing store network, the solution evaluates all possible scenarios, analysing how customer flows shift under each expansion hypothesis.

As a result, Veritas has been able to:

• Estimate the sales potential of future store openings, enabling safer, better-informed decisions when entering new regions across Spain.
• Assess the impact on its current network, identifying and quantifying potential cannibalisation effects in areas where the brand is already established.

• Enable locations to be compared objectively, based on key data points such as:
  • Floating and resident population in the area.
  • Sociodemographic profile of the surrounding catchment area.
  • Road traffic volumes.
  • Commercial attractiveness of the location.
  • Presence of competitors and complementary businesses.

These analyses are translated into detailed, highly visual reports based on real data, significantly strengthening and streamlining the decision-making process and supporting the company’s growth. According to the Spanish leading newspaper La Vanguardia, Veritas increased its turnover by 14% in 2025.

What we learnt

“Using big data to support business expansion is not just a competitive advantage; it represents a strategic vision for smarter, more accurate decisions, fully aligned with the real needs of the customers.” says Jerónimo Bueno, Nommon Lab Product Manager at Nommon.

The adoption of this technology provides an in-depth understanding of consumer behaviour, fostering the development of a more effective market approach aligned with everyday life. While particularly valuable for supermarket chains, this capability also applies to sectors such as restaurants, shopping centres, and pharmacies, among others.

With sustainable growth as a shared objective, InSite opens up a new universe of possibilities for companies seeking to deliver value where it is most needed.

If you would like to learn more about InSite’s capabilities, please contact us at nommon@nommon.es.