Health and Wellness in Your Stores

One of the growing trends in the food industry is increased nutritional awareness, as well as increased awareness on product origins and food safety.  This helps to explain the growing popularity of nutritional rating systems on shelves at grocery stores around the country. 

A recent article published by USA Today, which can be found here, outlines how a growing number of grocery store chains are using systems, such as NuVal and Guiding Stars, to help customers make healthier choices when it comes to the foods they buy.

Another way to aid your customers in making healthy food purchases is to be sure that labels on items prepared or finished in your stores list the proper allergens and other healthy food decisions.

A central recipe management system that is integrated onto the scales in your fresh departments helps to ensure that you are consistently providing the right messaging to your customer’s in regards to nutritional information, allergen warnings and dietary preferences.

Additionally, a recipe management system helps to decrease the amount of time it takes for ingredient substitutions, which is helpful in the event of a recall, ingredient shortage or ingredient substitution. 

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Improving your Prepared Foods Selection

Last week, Supermarket News posted an article on how retailers are improving their prepared foods selection in stores.  You can read the full article here.

Whether your stores offer customers a wide variety of prepared food options, or you’re enhancing your fresh prepared food departments in your stores, it’s important to remember that variety is not the only thing that matters.

It’s key to know how much of each product should be produced at the right time.  This can seem like a pretty significant challenge; however, with the right tools in place, you can ensure that your stores have the right quantity at the right time for your shopper’s.  

Customer’s that are using the P-Cubed Production Planning software have reported success stories and many similar to the following statement from a client:  “We had our first success story with P-Cubed Production Planning with an item that had never been on promotion before.  The system called for 31, the store was hesitant, but sold 30.”

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Fresh Item Management: A Competitive Advantage

At ADC’s annual ReFresh FIM Conference in October of last year, Harold Lloyd, our keynote speaker, spoke on how every great retailer has ‘5 reasons for being’ – whether it’s lowest prices, best variety, etc.  Every retailer should have 5 pillars so that when a competitor enters the market, they make take a way one or two of your pillars, but you will still have three or four more reasons why your customers continue to shop at your stores.

One of the biggest competitive advantages a grocer can have is to have the best fresh departments.  This means having the freshest products available, the right amount of fresh product available for your customer’s when they want it and the best prices, among other things.  It’s all about keeping your customer’s happy and returning on a regular basis.

A grocer never wants to have the following happen to them: A hungry customer comes into their store after work to pick up ingredients for dinner that night – a rotisserie chicken with a loaf of fresh baked bread, prepared mashed potatoes and green beans.   The customer approaches the rotisserie chicken section and sees that the oven is empty and there are none in the warming bin in front of them.  Essentially, this ruins the shopper’s dinner plans and leaves a bad taste in their mouth about your store.  Next time they need a quick meal, they will be less likely to stop in your store and more inclined to try from a restaurant or competitor’s store.

How can you avoid this? Ensuring that the right variety and quantity of food is ready when your customer’s are most likely to demand it.  How can you do this? A fresh item management solution helps to forecast production based on historical demand. 

But, that’s not all.  An integrated FIM solution manages the many aspects of a fresh item’s lifecycle: including shelf life, recipes, ingredients, inventory control (physical and perpetual), and more.  A FIM solution increases your fresh profitability, reduces your perishable shrink and helps to streamline the many tedious tasks that are a part of managing fresh departments on a daily basis.

Interested in learning more? Give ADC a call today to learn more about InterStore.Net, our FIM solution, or fill out this form to have an ADC representative contact you.

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Who is the 'Owner' of Your FIM Project?

Like many IT projects or investments, Fresh Item Management (FIM) must be embraced by all stakeholders to ensure success and maximum return on investment.  One way to be sure that all of the stakeholders involved communicate and work together is by designating a FIM Coordinator. 

You may be asking yourself: What is a FIM Coordinator?  Well, there’s no one answer for that question.  A simple answer is that a FIM coordinator is the person within your organization that ‘owns’ all aspects of the FIM project.  He or she is the one that bridges the gap between your FIM provider, in-store personnel, the IT staff at your headquarters, executives, and everyone in between.

FIM helps to manage all areas in your fresh departments, so it’s logical to assume that FIM will have an effect on many aspects of your daily business operations.  The FIM Coordinator is the dedicated person to ensure that all stakeholders are communicating effectively and that FIM is executed as planned by your organization.

Your FIM Coordinator can assess the entire FIM project and help to guide the overall implementation so that the biggest results and ROI’s are seen during your initial implementation phases.  Additionally, FIM requires a culture change in your business and your FIM coordinator can effectively lead the culture change so every stakeholder feels that their needs and concerns are being addressed.

Interested in learning more about the FIM Coordinator role? Contact ADC today so we can help fill in some of the blanks.

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