Cold Data. Jägermeister Equips Its Coolers with Sensors and Measures Customers Like an E-commerce Store

October 13, 2026

How many bottles does a refrigerated display sell and how much can the right advertising placement contribute? Jägermeister has turned its refrigerated displays into data laboratories, using discreet sensors in the Czech Republic, Germany and the UK to track when, where and why customers make a purchase.

The podcast is available only in Czech:

The German herbal liqueur, made from 56 ingredients, has long relied on being served at minus 18 degrees Celsius, when its bitter, sweet and citrus notes are best balanced. While bars and restaurants use freezing dispensers, offering the product ice-cold in the tight spaces of supermarkets has been more challenging.

“We knew that ice-cold Jägermeister sells better. But we didn’t have actual data to prove it,” says Nele Bercht from Jägermeister’s Global Trade Marketing team.

The brand could not accurately determine whether increased sales were driven by the cooling unit itself, a discount, or an accompanying campaign.

Getting the Most Out of Every Opportunity

In collaboration with Adastra Lab, Jägermeister equipped its freezers with weight sensors and optical sensors. Over a period of eight to twelve weeks, these anonymously tracked the entire purchasing process – from the number of people passing the display, through the length of their interaction, to the final removal of a bottle.

“In the online world, you know how many people visited your website, where they clicked and whether they made a purchase. In the physical world, this has traditionally been a black box,” explains Petr Blabla from Adastra Lab. He points out that the technology is discreet for retailers and works without requiring a connection to the store’s Wi-Fi.

“Many companies today want to deploy AI to optimize sales. But if you don’t have accurate data from the field, AI has nothing to build on. Our solution gives brands evidence of how to get the maximum return from every euro invested in marketing.”

A QR Guide for Store Staff

The results gave the brand a closer look into the so-called black box of physical retail. The analysis revealed differences between countries, store types and days of the week.

At Czech petrol stations, sales increased on weekends, when people were travelling to the mountains or by the water. Unlike British customers, Czechs also preferred larger bottle sizes of 4 cl and above. In the UK, meanwhile, Thursday afternoon emerged as the peak purchasing period.

The measurement also revealed some unexpected operational insights. Experts discovered, for example, that staff at some stores switched the freezers off overnight because they considered them “too cold”, or used them to store frozen prawns alongside the liqueur.

“We realized that we also needed to educate the store staff. We therefore added QR codes with a video guide to the coolers explaining why maintaining a temperature of minus 18 degrees is so important,” adds Nele Bercht.

The strongest evidence of success came from the retailers themselves. In Germany, sales results from the refrigerated displays were so convincing that retail chains allowed Jägermeister to keep its second freezer position permanently and completely free of charge.

Jägermeister is now using the insights to inform decisions about bottle sizes, sales channels and the placement of additional refrigerated displays. In the future, the same approach could be used to test checkout positioning, impulse zones or the impact of self-checkout, where alcohol purchases are complicated by age verification requirements.

A new Forbes BrandVoice podcast explores the use of smart sensors in retail, the combination of IoT and artificial intelligence, and detailed data on the purchasing behaviour of Czech and international customers.

Nele Bercht from Jägermeister and Petr Blabla from Adastra Lab discuss how to uncover the secrets of the physical retail black box and turn refrigerated displays into an effective tool with a clear return on investment.