The holiday season is quickly approaching, but as any independent grocery store or market owner knows, successful preparation starts early — and the holidays never really stop.
Let’s start by looking at the short term. Within a span of just a few months, small businesses need to ramp up for:
Then, just as the dust settles, you need to start getting ready for Easter, Valentine’s Day, and St. Patrick’s Day. Add local events, cultural celebrations, school holidays, and natural seasonal swings, and there’s a lot on business owners’ plates.
Preparing for the holidays can be stressful, but if you do a few things consistently, it can be considerably less so. Here are a few tips from our team of grocery store experts to help get you through your busiest seasons.
It’s easy to remember that you were busy during the holidays — but how busy were you exactly? It’s good to follow your instincts, but it’s also essential to back up your instincts with data.
Use your historical sales data to answer questions like these:
Reviewing sales numbers from previous years on your point of sale (POS) will help you rightsize supplier orders and might even uncover trends you didn’t realize were there.
Seeing what people bought (and when) is also invaluable for setting up effective promotions and product displays.
A Hispanic grocer pulls last December's item sales and sees that masa, corn husks, and cinnamon sticks were gone by December 22. This year, they place larger orders in early December and set new low-stock thresholds so the system flags each item before the shelf goes empty.
A neighborhood grocer looks at the days before Thanksgiving and sees the longest lines hit Wednesday afternoon, not the weekend. They schedule an extra cashier for that window and move deli and butcher prep earlier in the day.
A deli owner sees that shoppers who bought a whole turkey or pork shoulder also tended to grab the same sides. This year, they place those items near each other and run a mix-and-match promotion.
Instead of running big holiday sales ad hoc, plan the start and end days ahead of time. Setting dates in advance is helpful for a few reasons:
With firm start and end dates, you can better coordinate with your team and make sure nothing gets missed.
Social media is a great marketing tool, but it can be hard to find time to send posts when things are busy. We generally recommend sending at least one or two messages before your sale starts and then one or two more during the sale itself.
Use free tools like Buffer to schedule your posts ahead of time.
Creative displays help your store stand out, and they look great for promotion on social media, too!
Just like the promotions themselves, set start and end dates for putting up decorations and decide which parts of the store to style. Then, start to think about specific sales displays.
By knowing what sold well together in previous years, you can plan complementary displays (e.g., a selection of popular crackers, mustards, and dips near your deli section for charcuterie boards). Make sure to adjust your low-stock alerts for sale items, as they’re likely to move faster when they’re front and center.
A great way to upsell customers in the holiday season is through mix-and-match promotions, buy one, get one (BOGO) offers, and bulk discounts.
That said, if those discounts need to be rung up manually for every customer, your checkout will slow to a crawl. So, once you know what sales you want to run, set them up on your POS backend and then test them.
Most POS systems allow you to run test transactions, so you can make sure everything works as expected before the big sale starts. You should also encourage cashiers working on busy holiday shifts to run a few test transactions to get comfortable.
Optional: If you run multiple stores, make sure promotional pricing is synced between all of your locations.
Related Read: The State of Self-Checkout: What Independent Grocers Should Know
Busy holiday seasons can throw a wrench in your stock management. Some items might be overordered, others might run out, or suppliers run late as demand spikes.
Many stores have regular purchase orders (POs) set up, but it’s important to adjust them for the holidays. Here are some tips:
These suggestions might oversimplify things a bit, but the biggest takeaway is this: don’t just order as normal and hope for the best. There’s no way to account for every swing in demand, but the more you try, the smoother will run.
Related Read: Grocery Sales Forecasting: 6 Tips & Tools
Closely monitoring your inventory and sales is always a good idea, but it’s essential during the holiday rush.
Rerun department-level sales reports multiple times a day to see if any areas of the store perform better or worse than expected. This helps you spot items to reorder, identify areas that need some promotion, or inspire you to spin up a discount to boost sales.
If you see seasonal items that are underperforming, don’t let them become dead stock! Consider repositioning them in the store or spinning up a BOGO offer to keep them moving.
Prepare (and train your staff on) your virtual payments terminal to run payments in case any of your touchscreens or WiFi goes down.
Even if you don’t do a lot of e-commerce sales, you shouldn’t ignore how your store shows up online. Most customers (especially younger ones) like to see what’s in stock online before going in person. If your website or business profiles are out of date, customers might not even know you exist.
Start with SEO basics. Update the information on your Google Business Profile (especially if you have special holiday hours).
Ideally, sync your inventory on your POS system to your website so customers can get an accurate picture of what’s in stock before they come. Not only does this prevent frustration, but a customer might choose your store over a big-box competitor if they know you have a particular product.
Last, if you do sell online, prepare for an increase in those sales. Consider adding staff for order pickers as well as in-person cashiers.
Once things settle down, it’s time to see how your sale went. It’s OK if not everything went to plan — but by seeing what worked and what didn’t, you can make improvements.
Start with your staff. Ask them if there were any major slowdowns or friction points. What caused it? Was it an issue with how your POS system was set up? Or maybe they were simply understaffed at certain points.
Then, dive into the sales numbers. Were your bestsellers the same as previous years? Which promotions were the most popular?
Answering these questions will help you run smoother promotions in the months and years to come.
Even with the best plans for the busy season, you’ll still struggle if your POS system can’t:
To make sure your holidays run smoothly this year, update your POS system to one that’s purpose-built for grocery stores. IT Retail has over 30 years of experience helping independent grocery stores and supermarkets modernize their stores with grocery-specific features and hardware.
Schedule a demo today to see how IT Retail can help you prepare for the holidays.