How data is shaping the future of grocery-anchored retail

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Greenman Group - the name behind Germany’s largest grocery-anchored property fund - recently launched edyfi, a new data arm built to do more than tick ESG boxes. Led by CEO Carmen Sitz, edyfi is mining real-time building data from across Greenman OPEN’s more than 90-property portfolio to improve energy use, tenant strategy, and asset performance. In this exclusive Q&A, Sitz explains why the future of retail real estate will belong to those who can measure it.

REFIRE: Carmen, let’s start with context. Where does edyfi sit within the broader Greenman Group structure?

Carmen Sitz: Greenman Group operates across four interlinked zones: Real Estate, Utilities, Resources, and Networks. edyfi sits in the Networks zone. It emerged from a realisation that we were sitting on a goldmine of underutilised information. When Greenman OPEN, one of Greenman Group’s investment funds, began working toward Article 9 status under the EU’s SFDR framework, it pushed us to take a hard look at what data we had—and what we didn’t.

We realised we had strong operational access to Greenman OPEN’s 90+ grocery-anchored properties across Germany—energy consumption, equipment performance, footfall—but the data wasn’t unified, live, or actionable. Meanwhile, our tenants—retailers who are incredibly advanced when it comes to supply chains—often lacked basic insights into their own store-level building performance. That gap didn’t just limit them. It limited us as landlords and investors.

So edyfi was born not just to meet regulatory compliance, but to unlock long-term value through operational intelligence. Today, we act as both the data steward and the analytical engine for the entire group. Our work supports the OPEN fund, the operations of the real estate it owns, and eventually the tenants at those properties.

REFIRE: So edyfi was born out of regulation?

Carmen: Regulation was the catalyst. Once Greenman OPEN became Article 9, the reporting obligations became far more stringent. We had to prove we weren’t greenwashing. It became clear that nobody—not the meter operator, not the network provider, not even the tenants—had the right data. That’s what led to our first major project: Horizon.

REFIRE: What did Horizon involve?

Carmen: Horizon was about forecasting carbon emissions across the entire Greenman OPEN portfolio through 2050. Initially, we thought it would be easy. It wasn’t. We discovered how dificult it was to gain access to accurate real-time data. So we built a model and started installing sensors. Our first live data stream came from a centre in Mahlsdorf. That was our breakthrough. From there, we built a live energy model that now underpins the group’s emissions reporting.

And more than that, it gave us a shock: From the perspective of the landlord there is no clear visibility into tenant energy use. Landlords generally only see common area consumption. Yet it’s tenant behaviour that drives the bulk of a building's carbon footprint. That gap in data made us realise just how blind the industry was.

REFIRE: How does this tie into tenant engagement?

Carmen: This is where Greenman Group’s long-standing tenant relationships pay off. When we approach tenants about installing sensors, the first thing they ask is: “Can we see the data?” They’re not only curious—they’re actively seeking help in fulfilling their own ESG obligations. Of course, we sign data processing agreements, and we’re fully GDPR-compliant. But access to real-time data is a huge value-add for them. Many don’t have the internal resources to do this themselves.

And it helps them unlock operational efficiencies, too. For example, we’ve detected excessive off-hours consumption in refrigeration systems that simply hadn’t been noticed before. When you combine that with variable grid pricing, we’re able to work with Greenman Energy, the Group’s energy provider, to recommend shifts to some of their consumption into cheaper periods. These are direct cost savings without any disruption to their operations.

REFIRE: Are you already seeing commercial benefits from this data?

Carmen: Definitely. For example, footfall tracking is now informing lease negotiations and asset strategy. One centre we thought was remote gets 175,000 visitors a month. That’s almost on par with a suburban Berlin location. That kind of insight helps the Group negotiate more effectively with tenants and compare asset performance.

We also supply traffic insights to centre marketing teams. One example: we discovered the average dwell time in a rural centre was higher than in an urban one. That affects everything from building system operations to how Sonderangebote get placed in the local newspaper. These things matter at the granular level.

REFIRE: Tell us about Project Parkplatz.

Carmen: It’s one of our newest initiatives. We use license plate scanning to track where shoppers are coming from, how far they travel, how long they stay, and whether they charge their EVs at our sites. This contributes to Scope 3 emissions data for our tenants, supports marketing strategies, and helps protect our EV charging infrastructure from misuse. It’s about understanding the entire customer journey—from drive-on to drive-off.

And crucially, we link this data to tenant ESG goals. For instance, we can quantify how much of a tenant's emissions footprint stems from customer travel patterns. That enables them to map their Scope 3 emissions—which are notoriously hard to track—with greater confidence. It also allows smarter localisation of marketing efforts. If we see 30% of a centre’s customers come from one Landkreis, that’s where your campaign budget should go.

REFIRE: That sounds like a lot of data. Is there any pushback?

Carmen: Of course. Data protection is a real concern in Germany, especially in retail. But our green lease clauses and longstanding relationships give us access to the properties that third-party proptech firms just don’t have. Tenants know we’re not scraping PDFs—we’re installing hardware, capturing real data, and giving it back to them in a useful, actionable format.

And to be clear: our competitors often rely on energy certificate data or estimated values. We work with live sensor data and smart meters that we install ourselves. That’s the big difference. We’re not guessing; we’re measuring.

REFIRE: And internally?

Carmen: Internally, we act as the data quality insurers for the group. We manage the architecture, clean and structure data, and ensure consistency across dashboards. edyfi is effectively the data backbone for Greenman. That means we also help identify anomalies, harmonise tenant-side and landlord-side records, and ensure that everyone is looking at the same numbers. Not only this, for the OPEN fun, we provide the data in compliance with SFDR and ensure the OPEN fund meets its requirements as an Article 9 fund.

REFIRE: How does this feed into Greenman Energy and the broader ESG agenda?

Carmen: The portfolio consumes over 6.84 billion kWh annually. Our data shows that rooftop PV can already cover on average 26% of tenant energy use. That’s huge. With the virtual power plant now operational, Greenman Energy can buy and sell electricity on the market at optimal times, passing savings on to tenants. It all ties together—networks, utilities, and real estate.

And our data means we can build energy consumption and carbon intensity profiles on properties and helps us to understand the climate risk associated with the properties. It’s no longer guesswork. We’re optimising tenant utility contracts and reducing operating expenses in real, measurable terms.

REFIRE: What about building-level benchmarks?

Carmen: That’s one of our next steps. We’re setting a sector-wide carbon intensity benchmark for grocery-anchored retail. Right now, there isn’t one. We have the data to do it. And it’s vital: once you know where the bar is, you can build strategies to get over it. Think of it like high jump—you can’t compete without a standard to measure against.

REFIRE: So where is edyfi headed next?

Carmen: We’re scaling up. We’re hiring data scientists and engineers, building AI models, and working on setting an industry benchmark for carbon performance in grocery-anchored retail. Our ambition is to become the data manager for both the group and the real estate  sector. Data transparency isn’t a threat—it’s a competitive edge. Siloing your data is no longer an advantage. It’s a liability.

We’re building the tools to make buildings manage themselves. Smart systems, real-time control, tenant-integrated dashboards—that’s where we’re going. And the more transparent and open we are with that data, the more value we unlock for investors, tenants, and the environment.

REFIRE: Thank you, Carmen. That was both detailed and inspiring.

Carmen: Thank you. It’s an exciting time for us—and for the industry.