Is your grocery store ready for action?
You want every customer who walks through your doors to find fresh produce, neatly organized shelves, and a smooth checkout process. Without the proper equipment, this experience could be compromised, leading to lost sales and disappointed customers.
That's why investing in high-quality grocery store equipment is crucial to help you streamline operations, maintain product quality, and create a welcoming environment for shoppers.
This post covers the essential hardware you need for your grocery store. For each, we’ll discuss where to find this grocery store equipment for sale, how much you can expect to spend, and how to find reputable sellers.
Getting the necessary equipment is one of the most important considerations when setting up a new grocery store. This is your foundation for efficient operations, a positive grocery store checkout experience, and long-term profitability.
The cost of outfitting a small grocery store with all the essential hardware can range from $55,000 to $250,000, depending on the specific equipment needed and the size of the store. Knowing where to look is a big part of investing in high-quality, reliable equipment.
You have several options for sourcing grocery store equipment:
With these various options in mind, let's take a closer look at the five essential types of grocery store equipment and where you might find the high-quality hardware you need to set up a successful store.
Keeping your grocery store organized and appealing is essential for providing your customers with a great shopping experience. One of the best ways to do this is by using shelves to maximize space and help display your products efficiently and attractively.
Gondola-style shelving is a flexible option that can offer your customers excellent product visibility. Choosing durable, adjustable shelves that match your store's design is important.
Some well-known shelving manufacturers and suppliers include Madix, Lozier, and Streater. You can also find affordable prices online at retailers, including Rapids Wholesale.
The cost of shelving units depends on the material, size, and brand. Basic models may cost around $100, while specialized ones can go over $1,000. A small grocery store may need to spend a few thousand dollars on shelving to properly display its products and create an organized sales floor.
If you're planning to start a business where you need to store perishable items like meat, dairy, and frozen foods, it's important to invest in high-quality hardware like refrigeration and freezer units. Properly storing perishable goods reduces waste and lost sales.
Related Read: [5 TIPS] How To Reduce Shrink in a Grocery Store
Reliable brands like True, Beverage-Air, and Hoshizaki offer commercial-grade equipment. These brands are available at restaurant and retail equipment suppliers as well as online retailers.
The prices for commercial refrigerators and freezers vary according to their size and type. Smaller units can cost around $1,000 while larger, specialized equipment can cost $10,000 or more. You should budget a significant amount of your startup costs for these essential pieces of equipment to make sure that you keep products fresh and safe for your customers.
To run a grocery store deli section, you need specialized equipment like slicers, scales, and display cases. These tools make the process efficient and help present your products attractively. You can buy them from reputable suppliers like Hobart, Globe, and Vollrath, restaurant equipment dealers and online retailers selling grocery equipment.
Deli slicers can range from $500 to $5,000, depending on their features. Based on size and features, scales and display cases can cost several hundred to several thousand dollars each.
Related Read: 5 Top Options for a Deli Scale With Label Printer for Your Market
Efficient and reliable point of sale (POS) and checkout equipment help you process transactions, manage inventory, and gather sales data. For grocery stores especially, your POS hardware system needs advanced features like inventory management, self-checkout options, and flexible payment processing for EBT, credit/debit cards, and mobile payment to meet your unique needs.
IT Retail provides a comprehensive POS solution tailored to the needs of grocery stores and markets. Our system offers all the essential features and can be customized to fit your store's unique requirements. With IT Retail, you can build and price your own perfect solution, including all the necessary hardware and software components, ensuring a seamless and efficient checkout experience for your customers.
Shopping carts and baskets create a more convenient shopping experience and encourage larger purchases. They are critical to your customers’ shopping experience, giving them the tools to navigate your store and transport their selections.
If you're looking for reputable suppliers of shopping carts and baskets, Unarco, Technibilt, and Advance Carts are some of the top brands in the market. You can also source these products through online retailers.
If you have a small store, invest in at least 20-30 carts and 50-100 baskets to meet customer needs and promote a smooth shopping experience. Shopping carts typically cost $75 to $200 each, depending on their size and features. Baskets are cheaper, ranging from $5 to $20, depending on the retailer.
Every efficient retail store needs solid hardware for their point of sale system — especially the grocery industry, which carries varied inventory.
To be successful, we recommend the following:
The most basic POS system includes a barcode scanner, cash drawer, receipt printer — and of course, the all-in-one touchscreen computer.
The all-in-one, also called the terminal or touch PC, is the computer that runs the entire show. Make sure this terminal has the computing power you need to run your store properly. At minimum, look for an all-in-one that has a 1.8GHz processor, with at least 4GB of RAM.
To ring up items, you need a barcode scanner. For a basic setup, you can choose between two types: presentation-style and handheld.
Presentation-style scanners allow you to present the customers’ products directly in front of the scanner. This style is beneficial for grocery stores because of the often high-volume purchases made. Many customers prefer to stock up on goods for the week, or even month — and that’s quite a bit of work for your cashiers. Being able to simply run a product in front of the scanner speeds up the checkout line, saving your cashiers and your customers precious time.
Handheld scanners are your typical, most basic model, and can be either wired or wireless. These are perfect for reaching those bottom-of-the-cart items, like 12-packs of sodas. While you can rely solely on these scanners to properly run your store, having both handheld and presentation-style scanners will improve speed and efficiency at checkout — meaning you can serve more customers and increase profits.
And if your grocery store sells alcoholic beverages, remember to consider a 2D barcode scanner (specifically-designed scanner for age verification), too.
If you’re making sales, you’re making money — and you need a safe place to store those payments. While straight cash payments are becoming less and less common, it’s still important to have a cash drawer on hand.
Cash drawers are the original point of sale solution, and consist of a secure, locked metal box with slots for different bills and coins. They’re rugged pieces of hardware, and occasionally need replacement parts — and remember to make sure you have spare keys.
Pro tip: Placing cash drawers on the counter looks sloppy — and can draw attention to thieves. Consider hiding the cash drawer in a slot under your checkstand.
Modern grocery stores take modern forms of payment, which is why every efficient business needs a PIN pad.
PIN pads are pieces of hardware that process credit and debit card transactions. They may also accept gift cards, loyalty cards, and EBT payments. It’s important to consider a PIN pad that has a chip card reader, which is designed for EMV payments — these are more secure, and are becoming the new norm in secure POS transactions.
We recommend a signature capture PIN pad, like a lane 7000. And because stand beside payments are slow, you need a PIN pad on a stand where customers can insert cards easily.
Next up? It’s time to print a receipt.
Receipt printers print the record of your customers’ transactions, and you can choose from either impact or thermal printers.
Impact printers transfer ink to the paper, while thermal printers produce printed images by heating thermal paper. Thermal printers are a great option for grocery stores because they are quick and quiet — great for high-volume transactions.
Because the grocery industry carries unique inventory, grocers require hardware that caters to their products. This often requires scales for random weight items, like meat and cheese.
Deli scales look like your typical grocery scale, and include a platter for weighing the items, a keypad for manual input, and a barcode label printer.
Printing the barcode labels directly from the scale ensures that the item is priced correctly, and speeds up checkout once your customer gets to the front of the store.
Scanner scales are the scales used at the checkout register, and are placed in the counter. They can be used as a typical barcode scanner, but can also weigh items to be priced. Simply place the item on the scale, and the POS does the work for you — this is perfect for ringing up produce.
In-counter scanner scales are a must for high-volume retail businesses like grocery stores. Don’t waste time keying in individual items — weigh and scan items quickly to make the checkout experience more efficient for your buyers, and they’ll be much more likely to become loyal customers.
A customer display is a screen facing your customer that shows them the products being rung up. Because grocery shopping trips often result in a large number of items being purchased, this gives your buyers confidence that they’re being charged correctly. They may catch a mistake during scanning that your cashiers have missed, keeping your business accountable, so that you earn your customers’ trust.
For grocery stores with scanner scales, we recommend a display that shows the weight of your customers’ items — you won’t need to buy a clunky pole, so you can keep your checkstand counter looking sleek.
And here’s a bonus: you can use your customer display to show running sales and promotions.
An important add-on to consider? A mounting system, which optimizes the mounts, so your cashier display and customer display are effectively placed to ensure speed at checkout.
Ready to increase efficiency (and boost profits) in your small to medium-sized grocery store — without spending more money on labor? With the correct software, you can turn any point of sale station into a self-service checkout kiosk, which often includes a touch PC, PIN pad, and scanner scale. The software on these terminals is usually limited to basic functions like “Cancel Transaction,” “Product Lookup,” and “Pay,” so you don’t have to worry about a customer’s mistake affecting your entire system.
Setting up self-checkout kiosks is a great way to open up more lanes without paying more employees. It cuts costs for you, and relieves pressure on cashier-run lanes — and giving your customers more checkout options improves their overall experience. (But keep in mind, you should always have a designated cashier on deck to resolve any issues that come up.)
Every single piece of grocery store equipment for sale in this post is critical to a successful grocery store. With these pieces in place, you'll be ready to stock your shelves and open your doors to customers.
However, you need to make the most of your equipment to run the most profitable and efficient store.
One tool that can help you achieve this goal is your POS system. An ideal POS solution should offer advanced reporting, inventory management features, and efficient checkout capabilities tailored to grocery stores and markets' unique needs.
IT Retail's POS system is designed specifically for grocery stores and markets. It offers all the features you need to streamline your operations and boost your bottom line. From real-time inventory tracking to customizable reporting and seamless integration with your other store equipment, IT Retail provides a comprehensive solution for managing your business.
To learn more about how IT Retail can help you get the most out of your grocery store equipment and drive your store's success, schedule a demo today.