Company and store comms
Connect every location in real time. Product launches, promotions and merchandising guidance land instantly, with SOPs, pricing and compliance documents on demand.
The employee app for retail teams, from the shop floor up
An employee app for retail is a mobile-first platform that connects deskless store staff to communications, rotas, tasks and company knowledge from their own phone, with no corporate email required. Flip AI is the retail employee app behind EDEKA, REWE, toom and PENNY, reaching 95% usage against a 30% to 60% industry average.
Flip AI REVIEW: TOOM
How store teams work with an employee app
Turnover and split shifts make retail the hardest floor to reach
Retail runs on high staff turnover, split shifts and hundreds of sites. Reach is the game in retail, and reach is what most solutions quietly fail at. Critical updates still travel by printout, a manager's WhatsApp group, or word of mouth on the way past the tills. A retail employee app closes that gap by putting the message on the one device every worker already carries. Staff on the till, shop floor, or stockroom get real-time updates, digital shift swaps, task instructions with photo proof, and instant answers from internal knowledge in over 25 languages.
Read the Toom Customer Story
What a store team actually does with Flip AI
The value shows up in the ordinary shift, not the demo. A retail employee app has to carry communications, rotas, tasks and knowledge without asking a cashier to learn anything new.
Messaging
Answer customer queries without leaving the shop floor. Secure one-to-one and group chats with photo sharing and one-tap translation, so staff stop using private WhatsApp.
Rotas and shifts
Simplify rota management. Staff view rotas, share availability and swap shifts from anywhere.
Tasks and processes
Roll out displays and processes faster. Head office sends visual, step-by-step instructions; stores reply with photo proof for rollout tracking. Consistent execution across every location, verifiable from head office.
Company knowledge
Get answers at any time, anywhere. The AI Assistant returns a sourced answer, or a how-to video, in 25+ languages. A cashier asking "how do I set up a new shelf?" gets an answer without waiting on HR.
Tailor-made solutions
Build apps on your own specific to the needs of your staff. The AI App Builder from Flip AI enables you to prompt your own app solution for any workflow you need in your team.
'With Flip AI, we have established an employee platform that connects our branches throughout Germany. It is something that has become an integral part of our everyday lives.'
Michael Rybak
Managing Director
AI Assistant, agents and AI Workflows for your stores
The AI of Flip AI combines the AI Assistant, pre-built agents and AI Workflows on top of your knowledge base, together with Identity Access Management for the most secure and easy access. So retail teams get answers and complete whole processes in one place.
The AI Assistant answers on the spot.
A cashier asking "How do I set up a new shelf?" gets video instructions immediately, with a source, in over 25 languages. No waiting for HR, no calling a colleague.
Retail use cases
Retail use cases in practice
Retailers use the AI App Builder from Flip AI to build their own apps for store operations, without any coding skills. Because every app runs on Flip AI, it inherits sign-in, permissions and compliance from the platform: no separate IT project and no separate rollout.
Challenge: Opening and closing checks were done on paper. Closing checks were often only filled in the next morning, and district management and internal audit had little visibility.
Solution: Bea Arbeiter, Internal Communications Officer, built the “Store Check & Safe Count” app herself with the AI App Builder from Flip AI, without any coding skills, and refined it over 274 iterations using prompts. Store employees complete their checks on their smartphones every morning and evening. Problems go straight to district management, which sees at a glance which stores have completed their checks.
Result: 1,210 daily checks logged (as of November 2026, 25 stores testing).
Challenge: The daily safe count was done on paper, and counts often stayed unconfirmed for a long time.
Solution: One person enters the counted amount in the app, and a second person confirms it on their phone. Every confirmation is time-stamped, permissions are role-based, and internal audit downloads all the data as an Excel file.
Result: 700 safe counts entered and confirmed digitally (as of November 2026).
Challenge: Like checks and counts, key handovers relied on paper lists and late entries.
Solution: The same app also documents key handovers: digital, time-stamped and traceable.
Result: 101 key handovers documented (as of November 2026).
Challenge: toom’s store check ran on Excel lists plus Microsoft Lists and Flows.
Solution: toom built its own mini-app for the store check with the AI App Builder, right inside the employee app its teams already use.
Result: The mini-app replaces Excel lists, Microsoft Lists and Flows, and toom is already planning more of its own apps.
"When IT is swamped and I need an app fast, I just build it myself now," said Ralf Ludwigs, Lead HR-IT at the DIY retailer toom.
Challenge: Getting a new app to 17,000 employees through an app store is cumbersome, and many people never download it.
Solution: toom built a World Cup prediction app for its employees and added it to the employee app’s menu with one click.
Result: Instead of going through an app store, the app landed in the menu right next to the content employees already use.
Challenge: Information couldn’t be shared at short notice, and some communication ran through private messengers that weren’t privacy-compliant.
Solution: EDEKA Südwest has used Flip AI for internal communication since 2018, starting in personnel development with dual students, and has since extended it to other areas.
Result: 54% faster distribution of shift plans, 30 minutes saved when setting up promotional merchandise and 12 minutes saved per day at the bulletin board.
Challenge: Information in the wiki often couldn’t be found, and many questions went through store managers.
Solution: At Sonderpreis Baumarkt, the AI Assistant SMILE answers questions about item numbers, ordering processes and return procedures. At toom, the AI Assistant Bert gives store teams faster answers right inside the employee app.
Result: Sonderpreis Baumarkt’s AI acceptance rate is around 56%.
Make impact measurable
Every app you build with the AI App Builder records who did what and when. That’s why you should pair every new app with a KPI app or dashboard that shows exactly these numbers per store, such as completed checks, open confirmations or reported issues.
District managers and head office see the impact from day one, and you get solid numbers for your business case. At Sonderpreis Baumarkt, district management sees at a glance which stores have completed their checks and counts. That produces numbers like these:
1,210
Daily checks
Sonderpreis Baumarkt, “Store Check & Safe Count” app, as of November 2026, 25 stores testing
700
Safe counts
Sonderpreis Baumarkt, “Store Check & Safe Count” app, as of November 2026, 25 stores testing
101
Key handovers
Sonderpreis Baumarkt, “Store Check & Safe Count” app, as of November 2026, 25 stores testing
Employee app experiences in retail businesses
94% usage rate in more than 330 stores since 2020
150,000 users in 3,700 markets
90% user rate increase in 6 months
Information reaches employees 66% faster
30 minutes less time spent setting up promotional materials
100% usage rate in 250 branches across Germany
PENNY transforms daily work across 2,000 stores
Optimize the entire employee experience and unlock efficiencies
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about employee apps for retail
An employee app for retail is a mobile-first platform that connects deskless store workers to communications, rotas, tasks, training and company knowledge from their own smartphone. Unlike a desk-based intranet, it reaches shop-floor staff in real time and needs no corporate email, which is why adoption on a well-built retail app runs far above the 30% to 60% deskless-tool average.
It puts product information, stock and pricing in a worker's hand on the floor and lets them message a specialist without leaving the customer. Wait times fall and more queries are resolved on the spot, because the person facing the customer finally has the same information as head office.
You cannot deploy a shop-floor app the way IT deploys a desk app. Frontline retail workers have no corporate email address, often share a device, and turn over fast, so the usual identity plumbing does not fit. This is the reason good pilots stall at 30% adoption.
Identity Access Management is Flip AI's answer. It gives each worker one secure, passwordless login through passkeys and QR-code activation, in about two steps, with single sign-on into everything they are entitled to and full lifecycle governance for IT. Onboarding a seasonal cohort and offboarding it again becomes a controlled process rather than a spreadsheet. Safestore, the largest self-storage provider in the UK, put this to the test and rolled Flip AI out across 200 stores in six weeks. "Within about six weeks, we had everything rolled out and it was very seamless. It just works," said Phil Fryer, IT Director at Safestore, whose team reached 94% UK adoption and singled out the built-in translation as the feature that stood out.
The AI of Flip AI sits on top of your Knowledge Base and turns it into answers and actions. It combines the AI Assistant for instant, sourced responses, a set of pre-built Agents, and AI Workflows for automated processes, all reachable from the same app the store team already uses every day.
The Agents handle the requests that clog a line manager's day. Absence Management, Shift Schedules and Payslip Access resolve end to end from a prompt in the AI Assistant, so a payslip query or a holiday request no longer waits in an HR queue. When a process does not exist yet, AI Workflows build it from a plain-language description: type "a maintenance request that alerts engineering", and the workflow is built and ready to launch.
A well-implemented retail app reaches high adoption inside the first month. Safestore rolled out across 200 UK stores in six weeks. The drivers are a familiar social-app interface, immediate value such as rotas and payslips, and visible endorsement from store management.
Yes. With the AI App Builder from Flip AI, you describe an app in plain language and get a working mini-app that you roll out to your stores, with permissions and compliance inherited from your existing setup, so no engineering or separate security review is required. Retailers already do this: at Sonderpreis Baumarkt, the Internal Communications Officer built the “Store Check & Safe Count” app herself, and toom moved its store check from Excel lists and Microsoft Lists into its own mini-app.
Through Identity Access Management from Flip AI: a passwordless login using passkeys and QR-code activation in about two steps, with single sign-on and full governance for onboarding and offboarding. IT keeps control of the identity lifecycle without issuing an email account to every seasonal hire.
Yes. Flip AI is GDPR-compliant and ISO 27001-certified, with end-to-end encryption, role-based access and no access to private phone data, which removes the compliance risk of staff coordinating on personal messaging apps.
Flip AI runs the daily operations of EDEKA, REWE, toom, PENNY, Rossmann and Ben & Jerry's, among others, and Safestore is the flagship UK reference at 94% adoption across 200 stores. Usage sits around 95%, well above the deskless-tool average.
Ready to truly engage your retail staff?
🇩🇪 Made in Germany: Hosting in the EU, GDPR-compliant, ISO 27001-certified
🔒 Data security: End-to-end encryption, no access to private smartphone data
⚡ 95% usage rate: Higher than the industry average (30-60%). Flip AI actually creates added value for employees
🚀 Fast implementation: Rollout without email address required, 24-hour support
