With foodservice’s continual year-over-year sales growth, up 11.4% vs. last year, according to the NACS State of the Industry Survey of 2015 Data, it’s no surprise that more convenience store owners are looking to up their game in the foodservice arena.
It’s impossible to deny the sales and profit lift that a well-managed foodservice program can bring to a convenience store. Yet many operators—in fact, most—struggle with how to do this. They ask questions such as, “What should I sell?” “How much should I make?” “How do I keep from wasting food?” These are not easy questions to answer.
The recently launched exclusive patent-pending technology iGnG (Intelligent Grab-n-Go) by Orion Food Systems, owner of Hot Stuff Pizza, aims to answer these questions in three easy steps. The first step is marrying traffic patterns with a product scanner. The second is optimizing the product mix, and third is managing down waste.
iGnG gives operators an immediate inside view into what is selling and what isn’t in 15-minute increments throughout the day and provides the tools to maximize foodservice sales and profit by coordinating product availability (right product at right time) with customer traffic patterns.
More than 300 convenience store operators have implemented the technology and several are seeing an immediate effect.
It only took a matter of weeks before Country Pride Convenience Store, Winner, S.D., started seeing results. “We really got our money’s worth with iGnG. I didn’t realize how much traffic patterns changed from day to day, and this tool has given me the insight to proactively make changes to my product mix,” said Shawn Ulmer, store manager.
Managing waste is a direct link to how iGnG can increase profitability. At Holiday Stationstores in Bloomington, Minn., waste was at 11%. By focusing on a particular low-traffic period during the day and adjusting accordingly, waste dropped to 7%.
“We are able to make simple changes to the items we select to bake and when we bake them based off data, including customer counts and sales history, it gives instant gratification in both sales and margin improvements,” said Tara Anderson, category manager for Holiday Stationstores. “The system also greatly improves scan accuracy and offers time-of-day information for both sales and sales by SKU.”
Technology continues to evolve across all industries. iGnG helps bring convenience store grab-and-go foodservice into the 21st century by unveiling undertapped opportunities and changing how c-stores serve customers, deepening and developing long-term relationships.
For an in-depth look into the Three Easy Steps of the iGnG program, please visit here.
This post is sponsored by Orion Land Mark