Helpful tip to reduce stales

[RJT]

I know everyone has slow moving accounts and some slow moving products. We all have stales from time to time. While knowing your customer is key, stales are still going to happen.

I thought I would share a helpful tip to reduce stales.  One system I use is discounting products. You can use those simple round bright colored yard sale price stickers that any office supply has. If you see a slow selling product that is close on date just lower the vend price with the control board for that single spiral and then stick a sticker on the shelf below the item. I usually lower the price in half so I get my money back.

Some will think this could cause problems at accounts because some people may wonder why that one item is discounted. I have never had that problem. I had an owner I worked for one time say he would rather throw it away instead of discounting. He had some notion that customers would think his prices were to high to begin with.

If I would ever have a customer say anything I would be 100% honest and tell them why you discount certain items. Tell them you would rather pass along a bargain to them than throw it away.

When  you go back to stock the machine be sure you remember to up the price on the control board and take the sticker off the shelf.

On my slower accounts I have cut my stales to pretty much nothing.

If any of you try this method be sure and post back your results.

ONLY do this with close dated items. NEVER TRY TO DISCOUNT  OUT OF DATE ITEMS!!! Remove them from your machines ASAP.

[JEREMYTINA]

We only have one machine, and chips move slowly in it.  I have used a price reduction the week before a product goes out of date.  It has worked well for me.  My main focus has been surveying the staff, and trying things out to find what works.  I have to buy the variety pack of chips even though Chili Cheese Fritos are the only thing that moves well, but I cannot find a distributor to buy my stuff from other than Sam's locally. 

[RJT]

We only have one machine, and chips move slowly in it.  I have used a price reduction the week before a product goes out of date.  It has worked well for me.  My main focus has been surveying the staff, and trying things out to find what works.  I have to buy the variety pack of chips even though Chili Cheese Fritos are the only thing that moves well, but I cannot find a distributor to buy my stuff from other than Sam's locally.  

Buy the WISE variety packs from Sam's their dates are much longer than Frito Lay's, sometimes by as much as two or three months. Plus the unit cost is lower. What are your chip prices? You could also reduce it to one shelf of chips and add a row of longer shelf life items like bag cookies and such.

[ANDERSONVENDING]

JEREMYTINA,

There's a Merchant Mart at 4735 Distribution Dr. off 50th St.Their number is 813-248-1401,call them to see if they carry what you need.Their hours are till 3pm weekdays.

John

[dogcow]

i'm going to give this a shot next week to try to clear out some of the slow moving stuff to make room for different selections.

one stupid question though, how do you find the stale date on a big texas, i noticed some numbers on the left side of the bag but it didnt look like a date.

[RJT]

Dogcow,

I assume you bought them from Sam's. If so when you bought them the box they were in had the date on them. It is usually around 30 days after the purchase. All of Sam's pastry comes in frozen and kept frozen until they put it on the shelf for that day of selling. They use a pricing gun to date their boxes.

Some products will have what is called a Julian date which is hard to uderstand. Look it up on line and it will explain what a Julian date is and how to read them.

[dogcow]

Dogcow,

I assume you bought them from Sam's. If so when you bought them the box they were in had the date on them. It is usually around 30 days after the purchase. All of Sam's pastry comes in frozen and kept frozen until they put it on the shelf for that day of selling. They use a pricing gun to date their boxes.

Some products will have what is called a Julian date which is hard to uderstand. Look it up on line and it will explain what a Julian date is and how to read them.

they were in the machine when i bought it my guess is they are stale if they only last 30 days

you are probably right its a julian date thanks for the tip.

[RJT]

Dont forget about setting your par levels at the correct numbers. 

[dogcow]

Dont forget about setting your par levels at the correct numbers.  

yeah i got everything 5 rows deep which seems to be about as much as ive seen any particular item sell week  to week.

next week i plan to spend an hour at each location with candy reorganizing the machine how you recommended and repricing the slow moving stuff to get it out of there. i will prob just pull the pastries and replace it with something else, if no one has bought even one of them in a month i doubt just replacing with more of the same will have much effect.

 i have suggestion sheets up at both locations. also got some 'summer candy' and cookies for my outside machine too.

one thing that sells surprisingly well is bags of microwave popcorn. i picked them up because they were cheap and i didnt have enough inventory on hand the first week to replace some empty spirals but ive sold at least 3 bags per week consistently ($0.20 cost sold at $0.65) plus the exp is really long on those. in fact one of the shop workers even came up to me and mentioned that people liked the popcorn. 

the old owner suggested ramen soup in the winter months  anyone else has had success with that?

[JEREMYTINA]

JEREMYTINA,

There's a Merchant Mart at 4735 Distribution Dr. off 50th St.Their number is 813-248-1401,call them to see if they carry what you need.Their hours are till 3pm weekdays.

John

Thanks.  I appreciate it.  I'll call tomorrow.  Do they have tiered pricing, or flat pricing, like a retailer?  

[ANDERSONVENDING]

Flat pricing.they're a vending supplier that carries quite a bit of stuff.If they don't have what you're looking for then ask Jon if he can get it.

John

[WillisNYC]

Last fall I tried this approach at several accounts that I had slow chip sales in.  I found that one of two things happened.  If the location truly did not like that product, even a super cheap price (cost) would not move it.  Secondly, if they did like the product and bought the reduced price items, the sales of my other chips suffered and I would then have to discount these other chips in order to move them and it developed into a vicious cycle.  I created that problem by stocking the machine too high to begin with and trying to move too much product through a slow locaton.

Now that I have 60 or so locations, I have better luck paying attention to dates and pulling items that are about to go out of date within two weeks or less.  I keep those items in a special box that I then use to stock the front of the spirals of a few of my high sales accounts.    This enables me to get nearly dated items sold at the usual price and reduces my stales to almost zero in terms of chips.   

I have had less luck trying this with cakes since their life is usually no more than 3-4 weeks at most.  Even my fast moving locations discriminate against cakes that are late dated and I often find that cakes I move their with 'late dates' end up expired.  I even have a 'discount row' at one of my fast moving sites that I place these going out of date soon cakes in and they go out of date even there.  (and this place moves about 30 cakes every 3-4 days!

Getting my cake stales down is a work in progress, but the chip stales are easy to avoid if you pay attention to their dates.

[RJT]

WillisNYC,

I understand what you are saying and you are correct. It will vary from account to account and even area what will work. Maybe in the south a "discount" will work better than the north.  It is not an exact science and you will have to try different methods.

You can NEVER stop "working" an account. "Working" an account is exactly what you described. It is paying attention to what sells and what doesn’t. It is moving product around your accounts to sell it, putting more long life items in where needed, setting par levels correct etc. IMO setting par levels is one of the most important for slower moving accounts.

I posted what I did to help folks that don’t have many accounts and looking for help to cut waste. While I still use my method described it is not without moving product around and working the accounts.  

Cutting waste is an on going battle and an issue that you have to fight all the time. You have to try different methods and see what works for each account.

[WillisNYC]

RJT,

I did not mean to sound so critical.  I agree that you need to continue 'working' the accounts to make sure that you don't get stale product and more importantly to maximize revenue by stocking enough of the 'best' sellers.  I was also only pointing out what did not work for me and that moving product around worked better, especially as I got larger.  The bigger you are, presumably you get some accounts that move a lot of product where you can get rid of slow sellers before they age out.  My comments were intended as just additional ideas for new folks reading this and to share my experience!

[RJT]

willisNYC, I did NOT take it as critical at all. I understood exactly what you were saying and how you meant it. I appreciiate you chiming in and clarifing a few things. I guess I should have stated in OP that this is more designed for people with just a few accounts. We call the locations we move close dated stuff as "dump sites". We have a rest stop that you could put crap dipped in chocolate and I think someone would buy it.  We have 4 snack machines their and on a busy weekend they empty all 4 of them.

Anyhow, I know why you posted and what you were meaning and didnt take it as critical at all. 

[EddieMac]

the old owner suggested ramen soup in the winter months  anyone else has had success with that?

I've put Ramen soup in a few machines and they sell very well in all but one. ... and they're inexpensive!