The Date Check Pro Blog

Last week we celebrated Earth Day. We couldn’t be more proud of the students here in our home town of Whitewater that participated in various Earth Day activities, especially the students in Collegiate Entrepreneurs Organization who planted thousands of trees around town and on campus through their new business, Treenewal.

We wanted to contribute by sharing 7 ways to go green at the grocery store. Not just one day a year, but every day.

• Re-usable & Digital Coupons
  • You will notice some stores now have their coupons available right in the store. This is not only offered as a convenience, but these coupons can actually be used over and over again throughout the week. I used to work at Festival Foods, a grocer that has offered reusable coupons for many years now. It was always a pleasure to tell customers, “You don’t have to rip those coupons out, I can just enter them all for you.” By not ripping the coupons out, we could put those same coupon sheets right back where they came from for the next customer to use. Since we are a software company, we can’t help but to also mention digital coupons. No paper, no waste! Festival and other grocers now list their weekly coupons right on your phone through their own mobile apps.

• Re-use Grocery Bags
  • These sturdy cloth bags are available at almost every grocery store, or online and can be used over and over again. They also tend to be bigger than normal grocery bags, saving you trips back and forth from your car to your kitchen. If you don’t want to spend the money on reusable bags, just bring your plastic and paper bags back with you next time you go shopping. Your local grocer may even give you an added bonus of a few cents off your order for each bag you bring back!

• Plastic Bag Crafts
  • Do you have a mountain of plastic bags at home that only seems to get bigger? Make a craft(s) with them! I have seen plastic bag mats, and wallets. Festival Foods even features a plastic bag bench for two at their Green Bay West store. For some craft ideas and step by step instructions, check out this Pinterest page all about plastic bag crafts.

• Recycle Plastic Bags
  • If your not feeling artsy. Look for plastic bag collection totes at your local grocery store. Bring your mountain of plastic bags from home and put it in one of these bins. They will take care of properly recycling them.

• Shop Locally Grown & Produced
  • Since they aren’t coming from across the country or even the next state over, fuel is saved by cutting down transportation.

• Pass On The Produce Bags
  
  • You don’t really need them anyways right? Just wash them before you each them. If you are a germ-a-phoebe like myself, combine different items into the same bag instead of bagging each item individually.

• Skip The Snack Packs
  • I am the first to admit it is super convenient to grab the snack pack and throw it in with your lunch for the day. Think of all the paper and plastic we are wasting though! An alternative is to buy the regular packs of your favorite snack and throw some in a washable container that can be used again instead of thrown away.

Click here to learn more about ways Festival Foods is going green every day!

Click here to learn more about how student member of CEO are going green and building their business, Treenewal, at the same time!

Did we forget something, or want to share how you are going green at the grocery store? Comment below!

Should all out of stock products be treated the same? The simple answer is no. Data shows that the fastest moving 2% of products offered in a store represent 15% of the total lost sales from stock outs. It makes complete sense too. If you run out of mincemeat in the middle of the summer, the lost sales is at most one or two cans. However, if you run out of something like eggs or milk, or even a popular cereal, lost sales could be cases of product.

So what can you do?

We would like to introduce our “300 Plan.” While we wish we named the plan after the heroic soldiers from Sparta; 300 is actually 2% of the products carried in a store with 15,000 line items. This simple three step plan focuses your stores time and effort on preventing, or at least reducing, the number of times each of these top demand products is out of stock.

Step 1: Create a “Top 300″ NEVER OUT backstock.

• The extra space required in your back room is space well allocated. Even worse than having a shelf out of stock is being completely out of stock on a fast-moving product. Use the backstock to fill the shelves when needed, and then reorder based on the backstock inventory, not the inventory on the store-front shelves.

Step 2: Place priority of stocking time on OOS & Low Stock “Top 300″ items.

• Your stocker’s time is limited. They are not only worried about stocking, but assisting customers to find items, or bringing something a customer forgot to the register for them. By placing an emphasis on the time remaining on the Top 300 items, these products should rarely actually go out of stock.

Step 3: Identify “Top 300″ items on the shelf.

• Most employees can probably make some good guesses at which products sell the most. But do they actually know them all? Rather than make your staff memorize a list of 300 different products, identify them on the shelf with a sticker or different colored price tag. Something that stands out. That way any employee walking the aisles can quickly see if any of your constant demand items are running low or are completely out of stock.

That’s it. Not too bad right? Even so, if a “Top 300″ plan seems like too much work, at least try a “Top 200″ or “Top 100″ plan. See how things go, and then maybe work your way up to 300 items.

Remember, this is step 2. If you haven’t read step 1 on reducing your full store out of stock rate by carrying more product, and not rotating when stocking, you can read it by clicking here.

Also, click here to view the “Comprehensive Guide to Retail Out-of-Stock Reduction In the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods Industry” report published by GMA, FMI, & NACDS. The chart above comes from this valuable report.

So you really like a specific brand and type of toothpaste because it whitens your teeth and makes your mouth feel perfectly fresh. Any other brand or even other toothpaste by the same brand just isn’t good enough. When you go down the health and beauty aisle to find the store is out of your brand of toothpaste what do you do?  You can either settle for a different brand and be disappointed every time you are stuck brushing your teeth with this unwanted toothpaste, or you can go to another store. We know what consumers think about out of stock products, but let’s take a look at what they cost the retailer.

While it’s a good thing a store is selling a lot of product, it’s never a good thing to run out of something customers are looking for. Put simply, out of stock occurrences lead to lost sales. We commonly hear grocers say that it’s not a big deal if a product is out of stock because the customer will just buy a different size of the product or a similar product. While it is true that there are many substitute options for when our favorite toothpaste is out of stock, data shows that 40% of the time a customer will not even buy a similar product. Even worse, 30% of the time, the customer will buy the product at a competitor’s store instead.

Sometimes, though, a customer wonders if your store might have some of the out of stock toothpaste in back stock.  When this happens, the customer asks a store employee to see if this is true.  Checking to see if there is any more of that brand of toothpaste anywhere else in the store entails the employee going to the shelf in the store where the item is out of stock to get the UPC.  Then that employee must check on the store’s computer system to see if there is any of that type of toothpaste left in the store.  After finding out that there is not, the employee will probably check to see when the store expects to receive more.  All of this just to tell the customer it will be a few days before he/she will be able to purchase the toothpaste.  In summary, you could have been paying your employee to do his/her regular tasks instead of looking for toothpaste that wasn’t even in the store.  You didn’t get the sale, and every other task got put on hold.  In fact, the time employees spend trying to help customers find out of stock products costs grocer between $200-$800 per week!

As you can see, out of stock products are a serious issue. While there are many initiatives taking place already in the industry to reduce the frequency and costs of out of stock products, we want to point out what we believe to be the easiest and most effective first step.

One major contributor to out of stock products comes from ordering practices. Stores that are focused on rotating product when stocking are likely to let product inventory run extremely low or even completely out before ordering product. This makes rotating while stocking very easy since there are only a few items left on the shelf to rotate. However, the ease is coming at a cost of out of stock products. When all things are considered from the data we just mentioned, this ordering practice is certainly a mistake.

Now this may come as a shock, but we actually recommend that you DO NOT rotate product when stocking. By not having to rotate, you are free to order to keep the shelves full instead of ordering to keep the shelves from running out of product. Many of the larger grocers that we talk with that aren’t quite big enough to have an auto-replenishment system do not rotate. That is because an out of stock product is likely to be one of your 20% highest movers. That means that one of the select products contributing to 80% of your total sales is not available for sale. Multiply that by a few of them being out of stock and over time the result is a tremendous hit to the bottom line. Not only will having these products fully stocked reduce your loss from out of stock products, but also your labor cost of stocking will be dramatically cut from not having to rotate.

We recognize that this does cause an issue of expired product arising in the store. However, the cost of expired goods in a store is much less than the cost of out of stock products. Even better, that’s what we are here for: to make sure that you don’t have expired products in the store. Keep your shelves full, customers happy, and let us worry about expiration dates.

Remember, this is Step 1. Make sure to check out our upcoming blog post on our 300 Plan to further improve your store’s out of stock performance.

Also, click here to view the “Comprehensive Guide to Retail Out-of-Stock Reduction In the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods Industry” report published by GMA, FMI, & NACDS.

The winner of our 2012 Baking Photo Contest is Ali Murphy!  

Doesn’t this mini apple pie look delicious? Not to mention, the photo itself looks great!  She really went the extra mile to “plate” the dessert. All we can ask is, when do we get some?

Thank you for participating, Ali, and congratulations on your win!

Participants had the week of Christmas to post a photo of the goodies they had made for the holidays to our Facebook page.  If you would still like to share, we would love to see them!  We look forward to seeing what you make next year as well.

Below are photos of treats made by a couple of Date Check Pro employees.  We hope you all had a Merry Christmas, and we wish you a Happy New Year!

Things have been busy here at Date Check Pro.  Our company is really starting to expand and that includes new employees.  Among these new faces is Chris who will be helping with the sales side of business, while we have student interns working with marketing and social media.  As you can probably imagine, we all need a space to work.  Although we are a little sad to be leaving the UW-Whitewater Innovation Center, we are happy to announce we have a brand new office!

The 1800 square foot space is located in the heart of downtown Whitewater (which we think it’s pretty cool to be the only software development company in the city).  CEO and founder of Date Check Pro, Andrew Hoeft has been working hard the past few weeks to transform the first floor, empty warehouse into a modern and welcoming office space.  Andrew says, “Having an office of our own is an exciting step for the company. It gives us space to continue working to improve Date Check Pro as well as offers extra room as our company continues to grow.”  Our new office features a 21-foot whiteboard wall (well, actually it’s light blue), comfy couches, and bean bag chairs.  Did we mention we have a custom bag toss too?  Although we think it’s important to work hard, we also like to have our fun!  The new office also has a “no street shoes” policy.  Yes, we have a pair of shoes just for the office as this will help us keep it clean in the winter and spring months, but also keep us cozy.

When you first walk into the front door you may be surprised to see no art on our walls, but we promise this place is not boring.  The walls are colorful enough to make you not miss the paintings you might normally see in an office space.  Instead, you are welcomed by a very modern looking office space with the pipes and electrical conduit still exposed. It is a true start-up office space.

We look forward to continuing to grow our company, including the hiring of new employees in 2013.  We couldn’t be more pleased to have this new space for them to join us in, and you can imagine how excited we are to be working in it.  So, the next time you’re in downtown Whitewater, please stop by to say hi and check out our company’s new home!

AnyList is a new & improved grocery list app!

These days there is an app for just about anything, and this includes grocery shopping.  One that we would like to share is AnyList, an app that lets the user share and update grocery lists with other AnyList users.  In addition, this app allows the user to look up a recipe and add the needed items to his or her grocery list.

Since the app is collaborative, it can be updated by one user, and the update is readily available to another user.  Take this for example: a mother goes to the store with her grocery list on her phone.  If her son also has the same app on his phone, he can look at his mother’s grocery list and add anything she might have forgotten.  So can Dad and anyone else in the family using the app.  This would prevent the, “Mom you forgot (insert kid’s favorite snack here)” greeting when she gets home from the store.  Now back in mom’s shoes, there is no more worrying about what she needs to make dinner tonight by pulling up the recipe, and adding anything she still needs to her grocery list with the tap of a finger. In general, an app like this would make grocery shopping less of a task.

While many grocer’s already offer apps of their own that include a grocery list, AnyList’s unique collaborative list is still a must add! Consumers are using apps to help with their everyday needs more and more and the better your store’s app, the happier your customers will be. We don’t know if AnyList is looking to partner with grocers to use their list within a grocery store’s existing app or not, but that is a conversation we recommend having.

We won’t just leave that recommendation up to us though; we would also like to hear from you, the reader. What do you think? Would this app make your grocery shopping easier? Would you want to see it included in your local grocery stores’ app?

You can also click here to download AnyLists app.

Just about a month ago we celebrated our 1 year anniversary of the company and Date Check Pro. We mentioned in our last post that we spent the day at the Wisconsin Grocers golf outing. Props goes out to the entire team at the WGA for putting on an amazing event and for picking such an gorgeous day. In honor of all the hard work they did to make this event happen, we wanted to share some pictures from the event that show just how much fun we had!

Our challenge on the course was our Date Check Pro bean bag toss. Each golfer got four chances to throw a bean bag in the hole and for each bag that made it in the hole, the golfer earned a raffle ticket for 3rd row pre-season Packer tickets! In charitable spirit, we also offered the golfers a second chance at the challenge for a $5 donation to the WGA Education & Scholarship Foundation. In total, we raised $50 for the fund, and for Austin Gritton, a $15 donation paid off as he won the Packer tickets.

In all, we could not have asked for a better way to spend our anniversary. We had a blast meeting many of the great grocers in Wisconsin and the midwest as well as many of the great vendors in our region. You can bet that next years event is already on our calendar.

Yesterday we celebrated the 1 year anniversary of Pinpoint Software, Inc. and Date Check Pro.

We could not have imagined a better way to spend it then at the Wisconsin Grocer’s Golf Outing. It was a beautiful day and we met a ton of great people.

Looking back on the last year, there are some significants events that helped get us here and there are several lessons learned that we would like to share with other startups. First though, thank you to our family, friends, and supporters. You are all great!

So to get started, the events that we feel we could not have lived without:

1. 94 Labs Incubator and Accelerator- Thank you for having faith in us to give us the legs that allowed us to run with Date Check Pro. It was the seed capital and mentorship that came from this program that not only got Date Check Pro off the ground, but gave us the support to truly build a company. We had a great run and I now look forward to seeing all that the new incubator and accelerator (Gener8tor) can do for other startups.
2. The Wisconsin Grocer’s Association Expo- This was where we first publicly pitched Date Check Pro to numerous grocers. We got great feedback about our product and gained many great contacts at the event.
3. The move to Whitewater- The University of Wisconsin-Whitewater has been a huge supporter of our company. The resources offered to us here are very much appreciated and we are certainly glad to have made the move and to call the Innovation Center here our home.
4. WGA Endorsement- We certainly are excited about our product and we are happy that the WGA is as well! It has been and no doubt will continue to be great working with the wonderful team at the WGA.
5. Numerous pitch events- These events allowed us to get feedback about the company and product from a wide group of people. The new view points were certainly helpful.

Now for the good stuff! The lessons we learned over the last year:

1. Launch an MVP fast and earlier than you would like- A minimum viable product is the most basic form of a product and is a critical part of lean startup. Our MVP was a website with essentially two pages working and a lot of pages that said “Coming Soon…” While this would crazy to most, this allowed us to launch the product within a month of starting development and gain feedback from customers early. That feedback then allowed us to refine the product and make it even better than we would have first planned. In addition, we were able to save a bunch of time by not developing anything that a customer would not have found value in.
2. Involve the customer early- While getting an MVP available early is important, even more important is feedback from customers. In the “Startup Owner’s Manual,” Steve Blank states that “No business plan survives the first contact with customers.” Your customers know their business better than you do, or at least can offer a new viewpoint, so get outside of your office, meet with them, and ask them what they think!
3. Network like crazy- You never who knows what or who until you ask, so attend events in your community, and industry to meet new people. We have met numerous people that have been very helpful to our company at meetups, pitch competitions, and other events.
4. Pitch the idea all the time- To say you got the business model or product right from day one would be foolish, so get out there and talk about your idea. People have different viewpoints and will share information with you that help you improve your business and product by simply offering a new perspective.

We know Date Check Pro, is great, but in case that doesn’t convince you, check out these testimonials from our customers on how they think our our expiration date software is great!

“Festival Foods has been working with Date Check Pro for over a year. We continue to expand the program to more stores. We have been very happy with the efficiency and the data that is being produced. We continue to look at ways to make our confidence in quality products and quality dates a competitive advantage for us. I plan to prove that by using Date Check Pro, we can identify savings by rotating and selling product weeks before it expires.”

- Steve Burkhardt, Skogen’s Festival Foods

“I have been talking with Andrew and his company for several months about the Date Check system. After further evaluation, we have decided to install the Date Check Pro software in our store. I believe this software will not only reduce our costs related to close-dated or expired dated product, more importantly, it will provide a more sophisticated method of getting expired products removed from our shelves. We do not want to sell expired products to our customers, and this software should help us provide a more satisfactory shopping experience. As we are alerted to dates becoming closer to expiration, we will now be able to discount those products to expedite the sale of those products prior to actual expiration. This will reduce our costs and increase our profitability. I am very excited for this new technology and believe it will be very beneficial.”

- Jeff Maurer, Fresh Madison Market

For grocery stores shelf life management is a time consuming and tedious process. As a manager you are responsible for finding a sustainable, cost-efficient solution. As a former grocery store employee, I understand your pain. Here are some of the ways you can make it through the process without pulling out your hair.

Get a drone
I used to be a drone. My job was to rotate product every couple of weeks. Every time I finished the process I’d start all over again.

One benefit to ‘the drone’ approach is that there is very little training involved. It is a simple job that anyone can do. Unfortunately it’s not very efficient and there’s a lot of room for human error (not that I personally made any errors, but you know, other people).

Excel
In the business world, Excel is used for just about everything. You can use Excel to manage your books and manage shelf life.

To get started, create an Excel spreadsheet that contains the necessary product information so your employees can find items easily. I recommend including product description, product size, and location columns. Then enter expiration date information for each product. This can be done by having an employee simply enter that information when they put the product on the shelf.

Once this information is collected, your employee will no longer rotate products while stocking or rotate by section, but rather by item.

While this is a step up from the drone approach it is also a headache to manage over time. You have to train someone how to use Excel for something Excel was not made to do. If you are the manager, you will probably be the one that is responsible for this task. In addition, the adoption time for this method can take months if not longer.

Software
Use software that was created to watch expiration dates for you. This one is the ideal solution for stores that cannot afford to waste resources on paying an employee full time to rotate product. This is the most efficient solution because technology bridges the gap between manual labor and shelf life management. In addition, this software is customizable, allows for data tracking, and can be implemented quickly and easily.

These are the main solutions I found when talking to managers at grocery stores about shelf life management. What are some other ways you deal with managing shelf life? Comment below.