Visit to the NEC Trade Show and Spar Christmas Pre-Sell to see Spar offerings and also bakery ovens, video and security systems. Also inviting the provision of National Lottery Scratchcards at Redgrave
The Forecourt Shop and Convenience Retailing show at the NEC consisted mainly of new product suppliers trying to tempt retailers with their newest ranges in the hope that they would choose to order them in the future.
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The idea of researching in-store bakery facilities was to investigate whether we could improve on our crusty bread offering by improving margins (currently rather low at 17.5%) and provide greater flexibility with less waste.
The supplier I preferred was Amcott Ltd who provide a range of ovens starting with the Pygmy Oven System which is big enough to bake loaves up to a half baguette length.
This could be installed in our prep. room and the bread transferred to the display shelf as required. This is available for sale or rental and comes with all the associated trays and stands.
Country Choice offer a wide range of frozen breads, rolls, pastries and pies which can be easily cooked in a Bake Off oven. These are delivered three times a week if required and can be stored indefinitely in a chest freezer.
Most of the breads supplied are 400g loaves, equivalent to our small crusty loaves. The larger loaves are available but would be more difficult to cook, particularly if we wanted to go for the smallest size of oven.
Retail prices for these loaves tend to be more than we are currently charging for our crusty bread, but greater margins are supposed to be available (up to 50%). Cost prices for a 400g loaf are in the region of 40-50p and for the 800/900g loaves between 80-90p.
We could presumably charge more for fresh baked bread than for standard crusty bread, but we would have to consider carefully whether this was a preferred option.
With regard to security cameras, I met Quadrant Video Systems at the NEC who are also the Spar recommended supplier, and they were keen to come and give us a free estimate.
Spar themselves had a stand at the NEC and had Martin Rushton (who we have dealt with concerning our downloading problems) demonstrating their SparLink system, and also their latest version SparPOS.
It is not able to cope with newspapers, goods inwards or downloading invoices. Also, the suggested ordering process is rather more cumbersome than ours, relying largely on printed stock sheets displaying sales history, rather than actually producing the order.
The following letter trying to obtain the the provision of National Lottery Scratchcards at Redgrave.
'Dear Bev Reeve, Further to our conversation a week or so ago I was wondering whether there had been any further progress on the matters of the replacement safe, and also the provision of National Lottery Scratch cards at Redgrave.
You had mentioned that you may try and see us whilst you were in the area last week, but as we weren’t available, I wondered if you may contact us otherwise.
We would be very pleased to hear of any developments in this area, either via the store, or by calling us