Meat Nutritional Labeling: Effective Date Quickly Approaching

We're reposting a blog post from November of last year as a refresher on the upcoming Meat Nutritional Labeling.

March 1, 2012 marks the effective date for mandatory nutrition labeling requirements for single-ingredient products and ground/chopped meat and poultry products in the USA.

In December 2010, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) mandated that on January 1, 2012, the major cuts of meat must have nutritional labeling on the pack or at the point of purchase. Additionally, single-ingredient ground meat must have the meat nutritional facts on the package.1

Applied Data Corporation (ADC), a leading provider of fresh item, recipe management, and scales management software to the grocery retail and food service industries, has extended its systems within InterStore.Net, ADC's Fresh Item Management (FIM) suite of software, to provide readily available solutions to supermarket chains for the upcoming meat nutritional labeling requirements.

InterScale, ADC's brand-neutral scales management system, hosts nutrifacts to the barcode labeling scales in meat departments, regardless of manufacturer, from one centralized H.Q. system. InterScale supports different nutrifacts by vendor/supplier for the same item/PLU across stores. Nutrifacts information must be presented on labels in a rigorous and standardized format. InterScale now hosts these label formats to scales and printers from the major manufacturers, allowing the retailer large savings by avoiding expensive hands-on service calls by the scale provider.

NutriGen, ADC's Recipe Management software, calculates nutritional labeling information from a recipe's sub-recipes and raw ingredients, allowing InterScale to send this data to the in-store barcode labeling scales and label printers.

"ADC is continually working with our clients and the scale manufacturers to provide a solution that will exceed the mandate set forth by the FSIS for meat nutritional labeling," said Steve Loveridge, President of ADC. "Currently, we have some clients who are ahead of the legislation deadline by already hosting nutrifacts to their barcode labeling scales and providing this information on meat packages. We hope to see this number increase as the sunrise date approaches."

InterScale and NutriGen are systems within ADC's InterStore.Net suite of FIM software, which is an integrated software suite to provide greater efficiencies through optimization of food preparation and transformation processes in the grocer's fresh-food departments. InterStore.Net also includes P-Cubed in-store food production software and other specialized meat management modules such as cutting templates, cutting tests and meat traceability management.

¹http://www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/RDAD/FRPubs/2005-0018F.pdf

Want more information? Click here to contact ADC today.

Increase Fresh Department Sales with Food Bars

Food bars are a way to stand out from your competition and satisfy shopper’s who are looking for quick, convenient, fresh and tasty meal options.  An article in the February/March 2012 issue of Deli Business titled “Stand Out From the Crowd” by Lauren Katims, highlights these facts in more detail. 

Food bars in your stores help to increase the amount of impulsive purchases made in your fresh departments, which helps to boost your bottom line.  Additionally, customers are dining in grocer’s in-store restaurants/cafes so ensuring that your food bars offer a variety of fresh foods at the right time is important when trying to maximize how much customers spend.  

ADC’s Fresh Combination Manager software module allows food retailers to track the quantities of customer-selectable portions on a food plate, salad bar, floral bouquet or flavor-level for doughnut/bagel/muffin bags using any touch screen browser. 

Additionally, with ADC’s Perishable Production Planning module, you are able to provide system-generated production plans as simple “to-do” lists for in-store team members advising how much of each product to prepare to meet expected sales while minimizing the amount of wastage at the end of the day.  This allows you to further reduce shrink and continue to increase our fresh sales.

Want more information? Click here to contact ADC today.

FMI Midwinter Executive Conference

For the past few days, Stephen Loveridge, ADC's President and CEO, has been at the annual FMI Midwinter Exectuive Conference in Orlando, Florida.  This was the largest Executive Conference in recent years and we wanted to share some video footage of FMI President & CEO, Leslie Sarasin, talking with Supermarket Guru Phil Lempert and SN Editor-in-Chief David Orgel.  You can view the video here.

Additional video from the conference can be seen here.

Want more information? Click here to contact ADC today.

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. 

Want more information? Click here to contact ADC today.

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.”

Want more information? Click here to contact ADC today.
 

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.

Want more information? Click here to contact ADC today.

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.

Want more information? Click here to contact ADC today.