Hey everyone, its been awhile since I've been on the forums but I just wanted to gain some insight on what its like working in the Nutrition Dept. at Kroger. After graduating college, I've been having a lot of trouble finding that 'first' job, after going through countless interviews and temp agencies. I wasn't really happy with myself, after doing too much temp work that wasn't getting me anywhere (data entry). So now, I'm going back to Kroger until I decide what I'm going to do for a different career (thinking about becoming certified as an EKG Tech). Anyway, after interviewing with the HR Coordinator of the store, I found out that the Nutrition Dept is actually part of the Produce Dept, run under the Produce Manager. My question is what is a typical day like for a Nutrition Associate and what are the challenges? This will help me get a better idea of what to expect on my first day.
-- Edited by bagboy89 on Tuesday 25th of February 2014 10:42:00 AM
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The "hard" work is only whenever your product comes in. It'll be either in Peyton totes or in their own boxes/packaging. What makes it "hard" is that for some reason, the warehouse (at least the ones who sends stuff to our store) loves to place the nutrition stuff at the very bottom of the pallet.
Anyway, you break the pallets down, and stock shelves. You shouldn't have backstock from the items inside the totes.
What's a pain to handle is the organic milk. There's at least four major brands that offer the same varieties yet labelled very poorly. Only the Horizon milk is actually labelled decently. Fortunately, the Horizon milk is what really sells the most (at least over here). You'll also be handling other perishible and frozen nutrition items.
The frozen nutrition items should also be stored in your frozen food's freezer. Most likely you'll have to dig it out of the other crap there.
Also, the nutrition section is fairly small. Ours takes up only three short aisles, with a 40-ft. length of the wall for the milk/yogurt.
Usually in my store, Nutrition's product is buried under Dairy and the rest is found in the Produce cooler. Depends a lot of the store since some departments are slower to get their stuff off pallets so it could result in you having to break down all of it and basically doing their work. Nutrition gets a fair amount of product and rotating the product is much easier than other departments. A normal day as a nutrition clerk is breaking down the pallets, working new product and backstock if you have time. Markdowns and conditioning. Ordering new product if you are a backup to the department head or reviewing backstock. In my store they are usually only 2 people who work in the Nutrition department usually from 6-2pm.
Depends on how your store is run. As a nutrition lead, I need to work early on dairy delivery days (tuesday, thursday, saturday in Q) as that's the main attraction, at least at my store. My dairy backstock cart could almost be called a fast mover. You should never have backstock out of the totes like the use above me said, as all items in totes are packed 1. I work frozen on saturdays and mondays. Like I said, it depends on what store and zone you're in.
