You got it correct. Make sure to keep display compliance up to atleast 80 percent. Know the gun well and what sells during seasonal events ( Easter, June & July ice cream sell, Labor day, Thanksgiving & December ). Make sure your minimums are in order at all times. If they are too high, you'll get product too much. Kept low enough, you can just drop the item there and prevent overstock. To check for Distro: Ctrl E. To check your inventory or see if you have something in stock, blue button & O. F-9 to check forecast. Lows & holes is vital and should be done during ordering always.
Work with your secondary guy to complete the truck each night IF you can, this is extremely vital to know if product is up and check to see if you need to order during lows & holes. My store: Saturday is truck, Sunday & Monday is backstock & catching up on truck, Tuesday is display change and afterwards help with truck & order for Thursday, the second guy comes in and do some of the truck or backstock. Thursday truck is pretty small so I'll get it done and order for Saturday, secondary guy comes in and do backstock. If you got it organized like that, you'll always do good. GL!
Congrats, I've only been at Kroger for the summer but I'd say Frozen is the best department. Very simple yet still has its challenges.
We get a truck every single day of the week (average around 220-250 units). Fairly high volume store. The opener's schedule usually looks like this:
Markdowns / Daily exceptions
Backstock carts (every day if possible, every other day otherwise)
Unload truck around 9 am
Lows and holes (ordering is done thru this screen with new CAO)
Work 1-2 pallets of truck
Closers schedule looks like this:
Work truck
Condition
Have your backstock carts set up so that fastest movers are set up closest towards the door. We do an ice cream cart, a cart for tv dinners/chicken etc, and a cart for breakfast/veggies etc.
Your mins, allocations, and BOH will make or break you. Take your time when you set your mins because this has the possibility to make your life much easier. Our lead has allocations set on the low side so that we can fit 1 or 2 extra units on the shelf if we have to. Make sure every single person working in your department knows how to scan residuals. This is crucial. BOH needs to be as accurate as possible.
Our philosophy is this: We hate back stock. So make it fit on the shelf if at all possible. Set a tv dinner down flat extending a few inches over the shelf so you can fit 3-4 more on top of it, etc. Don't overdo it so it looks garbage, but try to keep product on the floor, not in the freezer.
Congrats, I've only been at Kroger for the summer but I'd say Frozen is the best department. Very simple yet still has its challenges.
We get a truck every single day of the week (average around 220-250 units). Fairly high volume store. The opener's schedule usually looks like this:
Markdowns / Daily exceptions
Backstock carts (every day if possible, every other day otherwise)
Unload truck around 9 am
Lows and holes (ordering is done thru this screen with new CAO)
Work 1-2 pallets of truck
Closers schedule looks like this:
Work truck
Condition
Have your backstock carts set up so that fastest movers are set up closest towards the door. We do an ice cream cart, a cart for tv dinners/chicken etc, and a cart for breakfast/veggies etc.
Your mins, allocations, and BOH will make or break you. Take your time when you set your mins because this has the possibility to make your life much easier. Our lead has allocations set on the low side so that we can fit 1 or 2 extra units on the shelf if we have to. Make sure every single person working in your department knows how to scan residuals. This is crucial. BOH needs to be as accurate as possible.
Our philosophy is this: We hate back stock. So make it fit on the shelf if at all possible. Set a tv dinner down flat extending a few inches over the shelf so you can fit 3-4 more on top of it, etc. Don't overdo it so it looks garbage, but try to keep product on the floor, not in the freezer.
This is a constant battle with my Frozen Lead, as a Department Manager. His backstock will just boom and he'll blame the usual suspects but a lot of it is poor CAO management. Also, my store doesn't have enough hours to have someone in frozen every day, so let's face it, anything the CAO orders for "the next day" is useless unless it's a sales item or heavy hitter. When I did frozen I manually did my orders through ISO. Eliminates backstock besides distributions. Key with distros in frozen (or anywhere else) is if it's some random crap the warehouse sent just because, go ahead and mark it down. How we organize our freezer:
Ice goes to the left as soon as you go in the room, then vendor cart (we only allow vendor backstock during big sales), fast mover carts (ice cream, sales items, other fast movers), regular moving cart (yes, we have just one), then slow movers. One slow mover per aisle. Finally a nutrition cart which isn't touched a lot in our store because it's not high volume. Also, I have a system:
1. Run truck 2. Scan backstock 3. Box similar backstock together (slow with slow, etc) 4. Date box 5. Work during backstock night 6. Anything that doesn't go stays in that box 7. Anything in that box after 30 days gets marked down 8. Make sure you adjust numbers so it doesn't come back in
By doing this I cleaned a department that had 17 backstock carts into six within a month.
Congrats, I've only been at Kroger for the summer but I'd say Frozen is the best department. Very simple yet still has its challenges.
We get a truck every single day of the week (average around 220-250 units). Fairly high volume store. The opener's schedule usually looks like this:
Markdowns / Daily exceptions
Backstock carts (every day if possible, every other day otherwise)
Unload truck around 9 am
Lows and holes (ordering is done thru this screen with new CAO)
Work 1-2 pallets of truck
Closers schedule looks like this:
Work truck
Condition
Have your backstock carts set up so that fastest movers are set up closest towards the door. We do an ice cream cart, a cart for tv dinners/chicken etc, and a cart for breakfast/veggies etc.
Your mins, allocations, and BOH will make or break you. Take your time when you set your mins because this has the possibility to make your life much easier. Our lead has allocations set on the low side so that we can fit 1 or 2 extra units on the shelf if we have to. Make sure every single person working in your department knows how to scan residuals. This is crucial. BOH needs to be as accurate as possible.
Our philosophy is this: We hate back stock. So make it fit on the shelf if at all possible. Set a tv dinner down flat extending a few inches over the shelf so you can fit 3-4 more on top of it, etc. Don't overdo it so it looks garbage, but try to keep product on the floor, not in the freezer.
This is a constant battle with my Frozen Lead, as a Department Manager. His backstock will just boom and he'll blame the usual suspects but a lot of it is poor CAO management. Also, my store doesn't have enough hours to have someone in frozen every day, so let's face it, anything the CAO orders for "the next day" is useless unless it's a sales item or heavy hitter. When I did frozen I manually did my orders through ISO. Eliminates backstock besides distributions. Key with distros in frozen (or anywhere else) is if it's some random crap the warehouse sent just because, go ahead and mark it down. How we organize our freezer:
Ice goes to the left as soon as you go in the room, then vendor cart (we only allow vendor backstock during big sales), fast mover carts (ice cream, sales items, other fast movers), regular moving cart (yes, we have just one), then slow movers. One slow mover per aisle. Finally a nutrition cart which isn't touched a lot in our store because it's not high volume. Also, I have a system:
1. Run truck 2. Scan backstock 3. Box similar backstock together (slow with slow, etc) 4. Date box 5. Work during backstock night 6. Anything that doesn't go stays in that box 7. Anything in that box after 30 days gets marked down 8. Make sure you adjust numbers so it doesn't come back in
By doing this I cleaned a department that had 17 backstock carts into six within a month.
Can you refuse Kroger's distributions now in Daily Exceptions? We've been getting alot of whip cream lately through distros, Breyers & other bullcrap like the two pallets of chicken kroger sent and the ice cream management ordered. Plus I haven't had a guy in like two weeks which increased my backstock to a bunch. You're right about the computer. I don't trust CAO and just do manual ordering and keeping minimums low. If I know a product will sell ( for example Orelda fries and cheap fries ), I'll order a bunch. The people who mainly keep a high backstock in my store are: DSD & Nutrition, because the lady doesn't do her backstock and hasn't done it in a month!
Anonymous wrote: Can you refuse Kroger's distributions now in Daily Exceptions? We've been getting alot of whip cream lately through distros, Breyers & other bullcrap like the two pallets of chicken kroger sent and the ice cream management ordered. Plus I haven't had a guy in like two weeks which increased my backstock to a bunch. You're right about the computer. I don't trust CAO and just do manual ordering and keeping minimums low. If I know a product will sell ( for example Orelda fries and cheap fries ), I'll order a bunch. The people who mainly keep a high backstock in my store are: DSD & Nutrition, because the lady doesn't do her backstock and hasn't done it in a month!
No, can do nothing about that. The only thing you can do with Daily Exceptions is it will tell you if the distro is scheduled to come on the next truck, and if so, it'll offer to let you decrease the amount you've ordered or CAO has ordered if any has been ordered. We're getting the same items. A lot of time it's the warehouse getting rid of excess items; in many cases Kroger has to buy 'x' amount to get certain prices, and then when nobody wants it they force it down the chain. Other distros are holiday based or upcoming flash sale type deals. Generally now Kroger is sending out upcoming sale distros on week-ending truck week before the sale. In our store Nutrition is pretty much non-existent so Dairy does Dairy Nutrition and Frozen does Frozen Nutrition, and we're very proactive about marking down nutrition distributions as they come in because we can't move the product well in our low income store. For DSD, you need to get with your receiver about that, and if he/she does nothing about it, get with your Merchandising ASM. Frozen vendors are notorious for being problem children and they'll blame "not being able to get in the freezer" for things but if your receiver polices them at the door, it will help you out in the long run.
Appreciate that. I have trouble with venders filling up displays each time I give them one. They pack it out even though the stuff doesn't sell that much as our stuff. Nestle is notorious for that. I keep their stuff up front so they can go after it. Distros is my main problem but as the guy says above, If the product doesn't sell in 30 days I mark it down. Our store isn't as high volume as it use to, but that doesn't keep from distributions hitting us up with a ton of product. Whenever I see a distros coming, I stop the order on that product and leave it alone and just use what I have in the back. Keeps our backstock down.
