From cutting edge EPoS solutions to energy efficient chillers, there’s a wealth of technology available to convenience retailers that can help take their stores to the next level.
Speak to any of the top retailers in the country about how they track their figures, attain optimal efficiency, or ensure smooth operations and they will all tell you that technology is central to their success.
“Integrating local community retailing with retail technology is increasingly important in today’s convenience store landscape,” says Henderson Group. “When done right, retailers can create a more dynamic, engaging and sustainable shopping experience that benefits both businesses and shoppers.”
Morrisons Daily Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire has taken the leap and invested in EDGEPoS from Henderson Group.
Staff currently encourage repeat customers through the use of request books. Store manager Ramesh Kurup says: “Customers note down products they want, and we make it a mission for us to have this available the next time they arrive in store.”
Due to Ramesh’s determination to stay ahead in the retail game, the store has quickly recognised the importance of integrating advanced retail technologies to enhance its operations and customer service. The recent implementation of EDGEPoS marks a significant step in this direction.
Streamlining operations
The primary objectives for implementing the EDGEPoS system were to enhance operational efficiency, improve customer experience, and boost staff productivity. The store aimed to streamline processes such as promotional label printing and supplier management, while also ensuring that customer requests were promptly fulfilled.
Additionally, the system’s detailed reporting features provided insights into sales patterns, helping to increase margins and transaction values.
The decision to implement EDGEPoS was influenced by several key factors. Ramesh says: “The primary goal of adopting EDGEPoS was to improve efficiency, enhance the customer experience, and streamline store operations. Overall, due to the recommendation we decided to install it within our store.”
Before the implementation, Morrisons Daily Fraserburgh faced several operational challenges. The store lacked advanced features that could streamline various processes, such as adding suppliers, products, and capturing wastage. These limitations hindered the store’s ability to provide a modern retail experience and respond quickly to customer needs.
“The implementation process for EDGEPoS was smooth and well supported by the EDGEPoS team,” says Ramesh. “The training provided was intensive, and although it was conducted as a crash course, it was effective in ensuring that the staff could grasp the essentials of the new system quickly. Alongside this, my staff picked up on the system very fast due to its ease of use.”
EDGEPoS provided valuable data insights, such as department-wide and hourly sales reports, which helped in making informed business decisions. These reports were particularly useful in identifying areas where the store was lacking and needed improvement.
Ramesh concludes: “I would definitely recommend EDGEPoS. Having a good EPoS system is one of the most crucial parts of any convenience or forecourt business. It works end to end from when the customer walks in to when they walk out, this is all captured within EDGEPoS. If you utilise the features of EDGEPoS you will improve your revenue.”
Glory days
Eurospar Downpatrick in County Down, Northern Ireland, has also benefited from EDGEPoS. The 6,275sq ft supermarket houses eight lanes of EDGEPoS scanning, four of which are standalone self-checkouts. All checkouts use the full GLORY cash management system, and a full loop system is operated throughout the store.
There are also digital screens in the store located at key points of interest for the customer, offering multiple points of communication on the customer’s path to purchase. These are unlocking a new way for the team to communicate price and promotion, added value messages, local sourcing credentials, and made in store products to shoppers.
Retail Director Mark McCammond says: “It is important for our shoppers to have the choice between traditionally manned tills for our staff to help them checkout their shopping, alongside the self-checkouts, which have the exclusive GLORY cash management system installed, meaning shoppers can use both card and cash, which is an excellent addition to a busy forecourt.
“This digitally led store also enables the team to communicate even more effectively with our shoppers via digital screens, displaying daily and weekly value deals and campaigns, plus offerings available at our Delish Made in Store kitchen as they change throughout the day.
“By using Henderson Technology, we are ensuring our products are fit for purpose and are designed and installed with the end user and, most important, the customer in mind. Investing in instore retail technology makes our store operation efficient, and our customer experience the best it can be. It is really important at a time of rising wage costs and energy increases.
“In addition, our shoppers also experience a store that is 100% focused on them. We are communicating more effectively; our pricing is accurate all the time with ESELs (electronic shelf edge labels), and we offer quick and convenient checkout solutions.”
Easier with ESELs
ESELs also proved to be a gamechanger for Spar Shields Road in Motherwell, North Lanarkshire, which was regularly dedicating two days every three weeks to processing promotional changes. The role of ensuring that all promotional stock was correctly labelled with new pricing and deal communications was tedious, time consuming and open to errors.
So, the store opted to invest in some new tech to save time and improve accuracy. With MPos ESELs, the same job was completed in just 15 minutes!
What’s more, with no more need for paper-based price labels and signage, the store saved £1,500 – a consistent 1% margin uplift every three weeks.
With staff freed up from having to mess with price tags, their time could be spent on other roles, allowing for better allocation of manpower across the store’s seven tills, making the store run much more efficiently.
Reece Denholm from Spar Shields Road says: “It’s helped a lot with stock control – it keeps the levels of our stock up to date and helps us go through wastage and know how much we have in the store and how much we need to order for next time and so this also helps along with our sales.
“It can also help us with theft if we know we have less than we should. It’s also helped with placing orders; it makes it much quicker and more accurate. It’s also helped keep our promotions updated with a few clicks. We’re saving time looking through [price] tickets, looking through all the promos and it just makes sure that they’re automatically updated, which helps us out a lot and it just makes our jobs a lot easier.”
It was a similar story less than half a mile away at Costcutter Muirhouse, where the team reaped the benefits of this clever tech. Before, staff used to spend hour upon hour ensuring that products were correctly priced. With the implementation of MPOS and ESELs, the store has achieved a massive reduction of three hours per delivery in pricing tasks. This translates to £68.64 saved per month or £823 saved annually.
Smart tills
The MPOS till system also heralded impressive results. Managing inventory became a much more streamlined task and there was an instant reduction in the number of errors made, such as stock discrepancies and pricing mistakes.
Utilising the new kit helped staff to achieve a consistent 3% increase in profit margins and overall bottom line, as well as enhancing the customer experience.
The wastage reports generated by MPOS tills provided valuable insights into the types and quantities of products being wasted. This allowed Costcutter Muirhouse to identify patterns and trends in wastage, enabling them to take proactive measures to address the root causes. By analysing these reports, the store could then implement strategies to prevent future wastage and optimise inventory management.
The team adopted wastage labels, which enabled them to mitigate potential losses by identifying products nearing their expiration date and encouraging sales. This has resulted in a reduction of £9.88 in wasted produce per week, which equates to £509 saved annually.
Over in Craigneuk, a suburb of Wishaw, North Lanarkshire, the local Costcutter staff previously spent countless hours per week on manual inventory tasks, such as stocktaking and purchase order creation. But their new MPOS system has now automated these processes, freeing up staff to focus on other value-added activities, resulting in a productivity increase of 60%.
Store manager Matthew says: “MPOS is a great system that we have in the store. It keeps track of inventory. It is so quick and efficient and keeps track of store waste. We use it to create labels for the shelves. MPOS is great for the end of the day too. It tells you what you took every day and any discrepancies on the tills and if there are any errors you can rectify it straight away by checking the transactions.”
Chilled to perfection
But technology doesn’t stop at the tills. In order to ensure that a store is truly efficient, you have to ensure that your energy consumption is minimal. Chillers are the most expensive part of a store, so investing in new kit is not a decision to be taken lightly. But the older refrigeration is, the less energy efficient it will be, therefore costing more money in the long run.
When the Glenshire Group decided to upgrade the chillers at Greens of Kirkcaldy in October 2022, they replaced an old 3750 remote multideck with Koolmax’s energy efficient 5m Milano full glass door cabinet, including a brand-new condensing unit.
“Our multidecks contain a condenser unit often mounted on the outside wall, away from the cabinets, connected by a series of pipes,” says the company. Installing the condenser unit on the outside wall of the store resulted in multiple benefits as it kept the noise at a minimum in stores for a more comfortable shopping experience.
In addition, having the condenser unit outside reduced the heat in store to ensure a more comfortable environment. Koolmax remote multideck chillers also have an electric night blinds feature to reduce energy consumption during non-trading hours.
The Milano cabinet enabled Greens to showcase its merchandise in an aesthetically pleasing way with double-glazed doors that are energy efficient, ensuring that products are conserved while keeping running costs affordable.
Koolmax remote multideck chillers come with energy-saving LED lighting, an Eliwell digital control, a multiplexing kit, and five adjustable shelves, making it easy to display and organise the products.
The company continues to travel across the country, from Dingwall to Aberdeen and Edinburgh installing chillers with energy saving doors.
An open and shut case
If brand-new chillers aren’t an option, but you are still keen to give your refrigeration an update, plus save money on energy consumption, then retrofitting chiller doors to your existing open cabinets could be a good option.
Lightweight, frameless double-pane acrylic doors give a great view of the product whilst helping to maintain temperature for food product longevity and reducing cold aisle syndrome, states Doublecool. “Unlike glass, acrylic doors are strong, robust and resistant to breakage for high footfall environments,” says the firm.
The company provides swing, curve and roll-in fridge door solutions retrofitted to retailers’ existing cabinets to enhance their retail environment. “We stock most refrigeration cabinet doors as standard. Following a site survey we would manufacture a profile to retrofit to the existing cabinet and install fridge doors in a matter of weeks,” says the firm. “Non-standard doors will be measured, designed and tailor-made to a store’s exact requirements.”
Stores that have introduced Doublecool fridge door systems, have typically lowered energy usage in the chilled section by between 40% and 60%, states DoubleCool.
Energy savings
Petrol forecourt operators, MPK Garages Group, achieved a 40% reduction in energy usage after fitting doors on open chillers at MPK Junction Station in Long Eaton in 2022. The group was so impressed with the results, it opted to roll out doors on chillers to over 20 more forecourt stores.
Within six months, Doublecool enclosed 253 meters of open chiller frontage with their durable, double-paned, acrylic swing doors, in 25 MPK-operated sites across the Midlands, as far north as County Durham, to Bristol in the south.
In total, 406 doors have now been installed. As a result, MPK Garages Group has been able to reduce operational costs in line with original forecasts, despite rising electricity costs. Each site is now consuming less kW, which is offsetting the energy price rise, critically resulting in containing costs and keeping MPK on track to achieve retail targets. MPK is predicting an ROI in just 12 months.
Wayne Harrand, MPK Garage’s Retail Director, says: “Installation has gone smoothly at all sites, with no disruption to trading. We are now seeing consistent temperatures on the chillers, even in hot weather. By taking away the strain on the chillers and reducing the need for maintenance, we’ve also experienced better food quality and hence less food wastage.
“We would highly recommend any retailer with open chillers to fit fridge doors. The reasons are as crystal clear as Doublecool’s doors! It’s a simple energy saving solution, good for the environment and has no negative impact on consumer spend. We’ve found shoppers are very supportive of the move, as they realise and understand what we are doing to provide a better consumer experience, save energy, and the environment.”
