By Pete Hodgson 182 January-February 2016 Building your meat department’s reputation for variety, high quality, and freshness is a big part of creating loyal customers. Customers today often prefer cuts prepared in-house, and demand for value-added products and locally sourced meats continues to grow. The short shelf life of meat [...]
By Mel Braverman, Jeanie Wells 177 March-April 2015 Almost every cooperative retail grocery is feeling increased competition in its community. Twenty years ago, merely having featured products consistently available was enough for co-ops to be successful, but this is no longer an option. In the last few years, not only [...]
By Mark Mulcahy 147 March - April - 2010 If you are a produce manager, you wear many hats: stocker, scheduler, buyer, counselor, margin manager. But I think there is one more that is just as important as the others, and that is your detective hat. This is especially true [...]
By Mel Braverman 137 July - August - 2008 When you drive your automobile, a number of gauges enable you to read critical factors in your auto’s performance. The dashboard presents “key indicators” of your auto’s health: fuel level, engine temperature, RPMs, oil level and battery charge. If you ignore [...]
By Mark Mulcahy 108 September - October - 2003 Last time, I talked about how we are judged by margin in our departments and how you could improve your margin by paying attention to specific areas (training, quality control, and accountability) during your everyday department work. In this column I [...]
By Mark Mulcahy 107 July - August - 2003 Are you responsible for your store department results? There's knowledge to be gained from knowing how your numbers affect the department's bottom line. And with that knowledge comes the power to create the change you want, by speaking the language in [...]
By Mark Mulcahy 103 November - December - 2002 Do you sample in your produce department? Not just occasionally, when a customer asks or when you think of it, but on a regular basis? Why not? Too busy? Too busy to increase your sales? Produce manager Kevin Bollman from the [...]
By Peg Nolan, Patricia Cumbie, Walden Swanson, Dave Gutknecht 101 July - August - 2002 Synopsis: Several years of data from the Retail Operations Survey, the Natural Food Merchandiser (NFM) "Market Overview," and annual reports of Whole Foods Market, Inc. and Wild Oats Inc. indicate that the natural products market [...]
