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Small grocery stores are often synonymous with high quality — but that can create high expectations.

Let’s face it: Maintaining consistent quality control standards in grocery stores is a challenge (think perishable products and lack of visibility). But letting your standards slip can damage your reputation’s brand in a way that’s hard to recover from.

With over 30 years of experience working with independent grocers and food markets, we have the expertise to help small businesses find cost-effective ways to maintain high quality standards.

In this post, we’ll explore why quality control in grocery stores is so difficult to manage, then give you some practical ways to improve your quality control processes.

 

Top Quality Control Challenges for Small Grocery Stores

Compared to big-box stores, quality control is arguably even more important for small and independent grocers. People expect the products at smaller grocery stores to be higher quality, and lapses can hurt your brand’s reputation and lose you sales.

But what leads to quality control problems in grocery stores in the first place? Here are a few top reasons:

  • Lack of visibility: Even a small grocery store can carry thousands of unique items — and when managers and staff are manually keeping track of products, it’s easy for mistakes to slip through the cracks.
  • Perishable goods: Grocery stores carry large amounts of meat, produce, and dairy, which are inherently more volatile than dry and canned goods. This means it’s essential to implement processes to ensure perishable items are fresh.
  • Food safety: While problems with food safety usually happen higher up on the supply chain, it’s usually the store itself that has to deal with the fallout. However, if food safety concerns do arise from something done in your store, it can permanently affect your reputation.
  • Inconsistent inventory and fulfillment: When dealing with thousands of unique items and both in-store and online purchases, a lack of consistent processes can lead to drops in quality.

While some of these issues may result from something completely out of your control or an accident, it can still erode trust between your store and your customers. So, the more proactive you are about maintaining high quality control standards, the better!

 

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7 Effective Methods To Improve Quality Control in Your Grocery Store

People scrutinize small and family-owned grocery stores more closely than they do big-box stores. A big chain might mess up every once in a while, but before long (and thanks to convenience and competitive prices), their slip-ups are forgotten. Not so with small businesses. 

People expect high quality at independent grocery stores and will remember when standards slip. Here are some surefire ways to maintain high quality control standards for all your products.

 

1. Use an Inventory Management System

First things first: It’s hard to maintain high standards with your products when you don’t have a clear overview of them. Manually tracking inventory information, expiration dates, supplier information, and everything else makes it shockingly easy to make mistakes.

Unless you plan to patrol your aisles endlessly, a grocery store inventory management system is the answer. 

These systems track important information about your inventory, including UPCs, which vendor you bought it from, the item’s expiration date (or approximate expiration date), and other key data. It then updates your stock levels in real time whenever you make a sale or receive a shipment from a supplier. 

With the inventory management tools built into a modern point of sale (POS) system, you can:

  • Get alerts when items are set to expire so you can set up flash sales and discounts.
  • Find if returns or complaints about certain products correspond with certain suppliers.
  • Understand your inventory turnover rates to optimize stock levels and avoid waste.
  • Find inefficiencies or errors in stocking processes that can lead to damaged or spoiled food.

This improved visibility is a crucial foundation for improving your quality control processes while helping to optimize inventory levels and reduce manual data entry.

 

2. Use Shrinkage Reports To Proactively Identify Problem Departments

Some amount of shrink, whether due to spoilage or theft, is inevitable — that doesn’t mean you should be complacent. Using the reports and analytics tools on your POS system, you can identify which departments are contributing most to shrink and proactively find problems before your customers do.

For example, you might notice that you’re seeing unusually high levels of shrink in your dairy section during the spring months. When you investigate, you notice some issues around the way dairy shipments are received and stored before they’re put into the display fridges.

Having a granular overview of shrinkage helps you pinpoint exactly which areas need the most attention instead of making storewide changes (that might not be that effective). 

 

3. Regularly Check the Status of Your Refrigerators, Freezers, and Produce Section

Temperature control is incredibly important for maintaining fresh products, but it can be easy to let small problems grow if you’re not checking on those systems regularly. The two main areas you shoudl keep an eye on are: 

  • Produce section: Ensure that the temperature in the produce section is cool and that there are no hotspots from windows or other sources. Check to make sure the misters have clear lines and that the produce bins under them are draining properly.
  • Refrigerators and freezers: Check the seals on your fridges and freezers, and ensure that the temperature is within food safety guidelines. Regularly clean out both types of units to make sure they’re working at maximum efficiency and that there are no spills that could lead to a food safety issue.

Set up a regular daily or weekly cleaning schedule for these areas, along with a monthly deep clean. This keeps small problems from turning into big ones and makes it easier to spot mechanical fixes before they become full-on failures.

 

4. Implement the FIFO Rotation Method for Perishable Items

Stock rotation is a crucial aspect of quality control at grocery stores, ensuring that customers aren’t buying stale or expired products. 

When it comes to perishable goods, the first in, first out (FIFO) method is considered a best practice industry-wide. Put simply, when using the FIFO method, the items you acquire first are the ones you put on the shelves first.

For example, if you get a shipment of prepackaged ground beef on Mondays and Thursdays, you want to put out all Monday’s shipment before Thursday. This minimizes the risk of spoilage and helps you store new items more safely until they’re ready to sell.

This is another area where an inventory management system helps. By having a bird’s-eye view of the arrival dates and expiration dates of different products, it’s significantly easier to implement a consistent FIFO process. 

 

5. Ensure Your Curbside and Online Orders Are Prepared at the Right Time

Curbside pickup and online ordering remain popular with customers and are a great way for small grocery stores to stay competitive with bigger chains. However, you’ll lose that competitive edge if a customer comes to pick up their order only to find the produce is wilted and water has seeped into their box of cereal. 

When you’re caught up in the daily tasks of your store, it can be difficult to figure out where online orders fit into your workflow. 

Implementing an omnichannel order management system can help. These systems consolidate your inventory and all of the orders from different sales channels (online, phone orders, etc). A unified order management system ensures that stock levels are up to date, orders are prioritized based on pickup time, and order status is visible on the system.

These systems prevent you from prepping orders too early or scrambling to make substitutions when a customer orders something online that’s actually out of stock.

Related Read: Mastering Omnichannel Grocery: 7 Tips for Independent Grocers

 

6. Adjust Product Mix To Avoid Spoilage and Waste

Part of maintaining standards for high quality in your grocery store is ensuring that everything on your shelves is something your customers actually want to buy. Often, we see small stores that unknowingly end up with dead stock or slow movers without realizing it. 

Use the sales reports on your POS system to identify your bestsellers (both individual products, product categories, and by department). This helps you understand which products your customers are gravitating toward and which ones are collecting dust. 

It’s worth noting that just because an item is slow-moving, that doesn’t mean you should get rid of it right away. If an item is a slow mover but has a high profit margin, the problem might be shelf placement or price point, not popularity. 

Keep an eye out for slow-moving items that aren’t helped by changing up store layout or by discounts — it might be an indication that it’s time to try a different brand or supplier. 

 

7. Have a Process in Place for Food Recalls

Of course, some quality issues are completely out of your control. There have been several major food recalls this year, and there may be another by the time you read this.

However, by having a consistent process in place for food recalls and outbreaks, you can build customer trust.

A food recall plan should include:

  • Who handles each task (e.g., tracing suppliers and sales, contacting wholesalers, taking items off shelves, etc.)
  • A communication plan, including email, SMS, and signage
  • A return policy for affected items

A customer newsletter is a good way to communicate the status of food outbreaks, especially those making the news. Showing that you are aware of and proactively monitoring the problem demonstrates your commitment to quality and food safety.

 

Make It Easier To Maintain the High Quality Your Customers Expect

Ensuring your store only sells the highest quality products is important for your reputation and to differentiate yourself from bigger chains. However, without a clear way to track inventory, identify shrinkage sources, and improve your processes, you’re stuck reacting to problems instead of proactively preventing them.

That’s why small grocery stores around the country trust industry-specific POS systems like IT Retail. Built specifically for grocery stores and food markets, IT Retail comes loaded with features that make it easier to track store performance and address quality control problems before they arise.

To learn more about how mastering grocery store inventory management goes hand in hand with maintaining high product quality, read our free guide on grocery store inventory management today. 

 

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