we are having our Inventory on December 1st. Could there possibly be a worse time to have it? We still have tons of Thanksgiving backstock and we are still getting Christmas stuff
When...not if...but when the warehouse starts to dump product to the stores just mark it all the way down immediately. After all, if you didn't order it, or if the warehouse say doubled your order for an item your immediately over stocked the minute the stuff hits your loading dock! And its probably getting short dated and the warehouse doesn't want to get stuck with it. They just dump it all on the stores so now all the short dated merchandise becomes your problem. This happens all the time in produce where I work. When this happens we say "Let the markdowns begin!"
Yeah, and in our produce dept. we have been doing something else to help push product after the warehouse decides to take a dump. Say they add out a bunch of cases of 8# grapefruit and as usual they're getting shortdated. Invariably there is at least 1 bad fruit in every bag. So we scan the bag to its suggested markdown price, then scan it again to take it out of inventory as damaged. Then we take out the offending fruit, weigh the bag to make sure it still is 8# (usually is) and put it back on the display at full retail price. If the bag weighs less than 8# we break it down into small bags & mark it as Manager's Special for $1 a bag. This has helped us push product and has helped our shrink a lot. Needless to say, since this works so well it no doubt violates any number of Kroger's Kommandments...but you just have to play their game so it works for you too.
