As a food and beverage retailer, you have a lot going for you.
F&B retailers also see larger basket sizes. While most retailers have an average of 2.73 items per sale, F&B retailers have basket sizes ranging from 3.39 to 3.77.
Moreover, as the demand for experiential retail continues to grow, shopping centers and malls are increasingly investing in dining and entertainment. As an F&B retailer, you’re in a great position to capitalize on this movement.
However, it also means that competition is heating up, and staying ahead requires a keen eye on today’s F&B trends. If you’re not too sure of what to watch out for, here are 5 food and beverage retail trends to get you started.
It’s a blunt statement (and an exaggeration) but they make a solid point.
More and more of today’s shoppers are doing things “for the ‘gram.” They’re attracted to beautiful retail spaces where they can take photos and document their experience on social media.
As a F&B merchant, you can capitalize on this trend by serving food and drinks that are as beautiful as they are tasty. Depending on your store, you may want to invest in photogenic plates and utensils, as well as props that your customers can photograph. You could even take it a step further by setting up an Instagram wall that patrons can pose in front of.
Have a look at what Cauldron Ice Cream is doing. In addition to serving rose-shaped scoops of ice cream (that alone isn’t something you see everyday), Cauldron has a cheeky wall with the words “It’s not gonna lick itself” written on it. The wall is a magnet for user-generated content, and Cauldron cleverly uses it in their social and marketing content.
Don’t be surprised if you see traditional apparel or accessories retailers enter the F&B space. As a response to the dining and entertainment trend we mentioned earlier, merchants across various retail categories are looking to enhance their in-store experiences by serving food and drinks.
Take for example, Tiffany & Co., which opened a restaurant called the Blue Box Cafe on the 4th floor of its New York flagship store. The move, which is part of Tiffany’s strategy to lure younger consumers to its brand, seems to be working. Andrea Davey, the company’s senior vice president of global marketing, told CNN that the Blue Box Cafe has upto 4,500 tables on its wait list on any given weekend.
Needless to say, as an F&B retailer, this trend is one to watch — particularly if you start seeing more retailers offer products similar to the ones on your menu.
Ordering food using your phone is nothing new; people have been calling in their pizza orders for years. But thanks to our smartphones, mobile ordering has reached a whole other level, and retailers who are capitalizing on it are already reaping the benefits.
This trend won’t slow down anytime soon. BI Intelligence expects mobile order-ahead volume in the US to reach $38 billion in 2020, which means that it will comprise almost 11% of total QSR sales.
In a similar vein, mobile delivery services are also booming. PYMNTS reports that overall food delivery sales increased 51% from August to March of 2018.
Mobile ordering could very well be table stakes in the near future, so if you’re not offering the service yet, it’s high time to do so.
Fortunately, services such as UberEats and Postmates are making it easy for retailers to implement mobile ordering.
Consider the case of Grain & Vine, a boutique wine and spirits store in New York. In addition to selling in-store and online, Grain & Vine also offers same-day delivery through apps such as Postmates, Minibar, and Drizly. They do this by tightly integrating their POS system (Vend), payments processor (Square), ecommerce store (Shopify), and mobile ordering services, so data flows smoothly from one platform to the next.
To learn more about the processes and tools that Grain & Vine — and other food and drink businesses —are using to provide better customer experiences and be more efficient, check out Vend and Square’s guide on maximizing retail productivity.
Consumers are increasingly gravitating towards ethical and sustainable products and business practices.
According to the Euromonitor International’s Passport Ethical Labels database, the sales of F&B products relating to environmental sustainability reached $196.8 billion in 2017. Meanwhile, F&B products whose labels detailed human sustainability criteria stood at $181.6 billion.
Euromonitor forecasts more growth in the sustainability front. “Our data shows that retail value sales of packaged food with an ethical claim will increase year-on-year by 4% in the US between 2018 and 2020 as increased awareness, availability and affordability continue to drive consumer interest in ethical food purchases,” Euromonitor ethical labels analyst Trishna Shah told just-food.com.
If your business is already big on ethical and sustainable practices and products, make sure your customers know about it. Mention your initiatives on your packaging, website, receipts, and in-store collateral.
Starbucks, for example, donates its unsold food products to charity, and it has signs in its stores letting guests know about their giving program.
Personalization has taken various retail categories by storm, and the food & beverage sector is no exception. RetailWire cites a YouGov survey, which found that 26% of Americans have purchased a personalized product “either for themselves or someone else,” and F&B was among the core five personalization categories for shoppers.
It appears that today’s consumers are going beyond buying customized apparel and accessories — they want their food to be tailored to their specific needs, too.
How can you adapt to this trend? That depends. Personalization can come in many forms. For some merchants, this could mean tailoring your products or ingredients for specific diets (e.g. vegan, Paleo, gluten free, etc.). For other F&B retailers, customization could mean letting shoppers “build” their meals, similar to how Chipotle lets customers create their own burritos.
Have a think about how you can provide more personalized products and experiences in your store, and test it out to see how consumers respond.
Adapting to this new and more competitive retail landscape is no piece of cake. Depending on where your business is at, keeping up with today’s consumers may require an investment in new technology, a big shift in your processes, or even an overhaul of your company culture.
Whatever the case, you need to act quickly. The F&B sector (and retail in general) will only get more competitive, and in today’s world, being nimble is key to survival. As Jeffrey & Bryan Eisenberg said in their book, Be Like Amazon: Even a Lemonade Stand Can Do It!, “The big fish aren’t eating the small fish… The fast fish are eating the slow.
The post 5 Hot Trends in Food & Beverage Retail — and How to Keep Up with Them appeared first on Vend Retail Blog.
If you’re not accepting credit cards in your retail store, you’re missing out on many sales opportunities. Consider the fact that as of 2015 just 32% of consumer transactions with made with cash, compared to 40% in 2012. We can expect this downward trend to continue as more and more people use credit cards and other forms of payment (e.g., mobile).
The post How to Accept Credit Card Payments in Retail: A Complete Guide appeared first on Vend Retail Blog.
­ The key to winning in today’s retail environment is to serve your customers in the best way possible. This means giving them the products they need at a good price, and then fulfilling their orders in the speediest and most cost-effective way possible.
It’s a tall order, and the fact of the matter is, you can’t do it alone. To truly wow today’s modern shoppers, you need to collaborate, and leverage the resources of other parties so you can focus on what you do best as a retailer.
But, how exactly can you establish these strategic partnerships?
That’s what we’ll discuss in today’s post. We caught up with Chris Petersen, founder at Integrated Marketing Solutions and had a chat about how retailers can achieve success through collaborations.
Have a look at what he has to say.
One of the first things we talked about was the current retail environment and how it’s changed throughout the years. According to Chris, things are moving at a much faster pace than ever before, and the biggest driver of retail transformation are the customers.
There’s the aspect of speed. “A lot of retailers ten, fifteen years ago said, ‘Well, we need to be multi-channeled; we need to be online.’ That’s no longer enough because shoppers are looking for a relationship; they’re looking for speed; they’re looking for the ability to do mobile shopping, as well as physical shopping,” Chris says.
Fulfilling those expectations is no piece of cake, and for many retailers, Chris says the challenge comes down to three things: a lack of talent, a lack of technology (and investment), and the industry moving too rapidly.
“My first recommendation for SMBs is focus on the customer not on the channel,” he says.
Retailers need to focus on differentiation, adds Chris.
“Profitability should always be a concern. We can do lots of things and spend money to pay for outsourcing services, but it should add value to the business,” he says.
“Some of the key things to ask is how does it impact inventory? How does it impact conversion rates?
Collaboration should be measurable. It shouldn’t just be a good idea or someone’s thought to try something. It should be very testable and measurable.
Today, retailers can take their distributor relationships to another level by sharing more of their data.
But that type of process can’t be carried out in a vacuum.
Interesting partnerships are also emerging between mall operators and retailers. Nebraska Crossing Mall, for example, has a mall-wide app which has features help shoppers navigate the mall, get updates, and find deals.
The great thing about it is that it leverages each store’s data to learn more about shoppers, so that merchants can serve them better.
“So, it is location analytics, it’s geo-sensing in terms of tracking, it’s a platform where retailers can make special offers to certain customers or certain hours of the day,” shares Chris.
“I had the opportunity and fortunate experience of being able to work abroad and I continue to be amazed at how far ahead some things are in India,” Chris adds.
It is an amazing network that small retailers and shops can plug into.
If you want to thrive in the coming years, you need to recognize that you can’t operate alone. Even retail giants such as Amazon and Walmart understand value of collaboration with third parties. It is high time for small and medium merchants to evaluate how they can do the same.
The post Collaboration in the Retail Industry: A Q&A with Chris Petersen appeared first on Vend Retail Blog.
If you’re looking for a POS solution that doesn’t take a percentage off your sales, look into Vend’s pricing plans, which start at $69 per month (USD).
Registers are the devices on which you run your point of sale software. In the realm of POS pricing, you would typically pay a set amount per register. For example, at Vend, our multi-outlet plan starts at $199 and automatically comes with 2 registers. Retailers can add more as needed, for $39 USD a month.
For example, all of Vend’s paid plans come with unlimited products, so you don’t have to worry about paying more if you have a lot of SKUs. That said, if you have a limited product catalog and budget, Vend’s free plan allows up to 10 products.
If you’re looking for basic point of sale features (e.g. sell screen, basic reporting, etc.) then you can probably go for a low-tiered plan. However, if you require more advanced features (e.g. gift cards, advanced reporting, ecommerce, etc.) then you’ll likely have to shell out more funds.
At this stage, you need a starter POS.
Software cost: $69 USD per month.
At this stage, you might also be keen on getting to know your business better. You’d like to get your hands on sales reports by brand, product category, tag, supplier, register, and outlet. You’re also looking to dig deeper into product performance so you can forecast your inventory levels and stock up accordingly.
Software cost: $79 USD per month.
You’re a multi-store and multi-channel business, and you need a retail management system to help you stay on top of your outlets, employees, customers, and operations. You need capabilities like advanced reporting, customer relationship management, loyalty, omnichannel, and so much more.
Given the nature of your business, you might also need priority support to ensure that everything runs smoothly.
Software cost: $199 USD per month.
The post How Much Do POS Systems Cost? A Guide to Point of Sale Pricing appeared first on Vend Retail Blog.
Allow me to help and walk you through the features you should be looking for in your new POS (and which extras will actually help you grow).
To start, let’s stipulate that even if you’re running the banana stand from Arrested Development, these days you’re not just looking for a plain old POS (by which I mean a cash register). You’re looking for a retail management system.
In today’s world, your POS software should be a part of a larger solution that helps you run and grow your business end-to-end.
As such, I’m going to walk through the features you need, as well as the features you may not need but may find very helpful. I’ll be breaking them into the different overarching components of your retail management system: point of sale, inventory management, customer management, and reporting.
Let’s start with the features you should look for in the POS portion of your retail management system. This portion will cover the capabilities that you’ll typically need at the checkout counter.
Quick keys are shortcuts within your POS system that allow associates to hit a single button for a commonly sold item.
Meanwhile, the rest of your catalog should still be easily accessible. Be sure to go with a POS that lets you quickly search or lookup products when ringing up sales. Ideally, this search feature is right on the sell screen so your cashiers won’t have to jump into another screen just to look up an item.
Go beyond traditional payment methods like cash and credit cards. Look for a POS that allows you to take mobile payments. You also want to be able to split a payment in case a customer wants to spread their payment across a few gift cards, an Amex and cash.
Ironically, a store’s return policy can be vital to its success, as consumers increasingly prefer stores with shopper-friendly policies.
To that end, you should ensure that your POS system can help you create the ideal return policy for your store by providing you with flexible options to return items for both refunds or store credit.
Unless you’re a one-person operation, chances are you’ll have multiple people working your registers. You need a system that allows you to create a user for each of them so that you can track the sales every person makes. This feature will ultimately allow you to set sales goals (or see if one of your employees is perhaps being dishonest).
You should also be sure to get a system that allows you to password protect each user, as well as gives you the chance to choose whether or not you want to have a user log-in for each new sale they make.
That choice is, of course, dependent on the way your store is run. For instance, at big box stores like Target, an employee logs in once and remains logged in during their time at the register. This is because employees are stationed at a register for a lengthy period of their shift. Whereas at many mall stores, employees log in with each new sale, because they are expected to move out from behind the desk once a sale is over.
It’s the digital era and at this point, you can’t afford not to have mobile registers. Typically, you’ll want to look for a cloud POS system that has a mobile app so you can run your software on mobile devices (such as iPads).
Mobile registers are fantastic because they allow you to ring someone anywhere in the store — preventing queues. You can also take them on the road and create pop-up shops! But even if you plan to never move your registers from behind a desk, tablets are simply cheaper and less bulky than traditional desktop registers.
A customer-facing display means that as a customer is being rung, they can watch the transaction happen on a (usually secondary) screen that faces them. Customer facing displays allow customers a high level of transparency into the transaction and can make it easy for them to point out if there are mistakes in the order before it is placed.
This feature is certainly not necessary if it ends up being out of your price range, but should definitely be considered if you have the budget.
Inventory management is the next segment that you should look for in a retail management system, whether you have 5 products or 5,000. As its name suggests, the inventory component of the system will keep track of all of your products and even help you see which products perform well and which don’t.
Be sure that whatever retail management system you go with allows you to upload all your products in a bulk upload. Unless you have only a few items on sale, manually uploading each product you have will get tedious and is a waste of your time when you can just get a system that will run a bulk upload.
Look for a system that allows you to create variants of products. Think about a clothing store, for instance. If they sell the same shirt in six colors, the system should be able to record that as the same shirt in multiple colors rather than as six different shirts.
Composite products are a similar idea. A composite product is a product made out of your pre-existing products. For instance, a wine store might want to be able to sell a case of wine as an item because they provide a 10% discount on cases. Rather than ringing each of the bottles and doing the math to take the discount, their inventory system could allow the associate to ring up a case as an item itself at that lower price.
Your inventory system should be able to print barcodes (or other labeling methods) so that you can keep each of your products neatly tagged and trackable. That barcode allows the inventory system to know exactly where the item is in your system. You’ll use barcodes to scan when an item enters your stock, when you ship it to another store, or when you sell it.
Your inventory management system should also make it a snap to order more stock for your store. You should be able to both create the stock order in your system and then send it out to your suppliers through the system.
Some businesses will also benefit from a system that can automatically generate orders for them. If you have some items that are perennial, an auto-filling feature will save you a lot of time.
Inventory counting is tedious but necessary, as you need to track your stock and check for loss. Not only should you use a system that makes your inventory counting easier, but you should use a system that will allow you to use a scanner so you can count digitally rather than manually.
For a store with more than one physical location, a stock transferring feature is essential. Stock transferring will make it easy for you to transfer items between stores so you can easily move stock from one location to the next.
You may need to run promotions or discounts to move your inventory. Choose a system that lets you do this easily, so you won’t have to worry about manually updating prices or product info when you’re discounting.
A good retail management system will have a pared-down CRM, or customer manager, as a part of its solution, so that you can track all your customer data.
You’ll need your employees to look up a customer each time they ring someone. They’ll attach the sale to the customer’s name so that….
Your contact manager needs to record the purchase history of each client. This will allow your associates to return items when the receipt was lost, or even check in and see what a certain customer likes to buy. From a wider view, the purchase history will help you with such things as marketing and merchandising decisions.
Custom properties allow you to decide what data you want to have your associates enter about your customers. Common properties include birthday or address. These pieces of data will help you with your marketing efforts and even your loyalty program.
Loyalty programs are not necessary, but they sure will help grow your business. Look for a solution that has built-in loyalty program software, making it easy for you to get one up and running.
Beyond a simple close-out report, your POS should be able to provide you with a full set of reports to help you track the performance of your business. Here are some of the reporting features to look for.
A dashboard gives you an at-a-glance view of how your store is doing. It’s a great feature to have because it gives you an immediate of your business’ performance without having to dig or hunt for the info.
Your system must be capable of reporting on all your stock data for you. Such reports should include best and worst selling items, helping you make better merchandising and pricing decisions in the future.
Who are your top-performing associates? Is there anyone who needs to improve? Are you setting the right sales targets? With the right employee reporting tools, answering these questions would be a breeze.
Your retail management system should give you insights into who your best customers are and what you can do to engage them. Be sure to look for customer reporting when shopping around for a POS or retail system.
Ready-made reports are great, but sometimes you need build your own. For instance, let’s say you want to see a hybrid of a product report and outlet (or location) report so you can drill down on the specific items that are being sold at your stores. You can only do this if you have a system that offers flexible reporting.
Looking at the features above should give you an idea of what solutions are right for your stores. Use that knowledge to build a list of some of your top choices, then reach out to the software providers to see if they can offer more information.
The post 22 POS Features to Look for in a Retail Management System appeared first on Vend Retail Blog.