Whole Foods: Effective Line System

As I walked into Wawa, I could confidently tell you where everything is because the layouts of every Wawa in New Jersey are almost identical. There is a wall of refrigerators filled with soda to the right as you walk in, a side of the store towards the back reserved for making sandwiches, endless shelves of junk food by the registers at the front entrance and the refrigerators filled with soda, and an open freezer area in the middle of the store with some “healthier” foods. The amount of people inside took me completely by surprise as I opened the door because there was a lack of cars parked in the parking lot. I personally felt like I was in a grocery store rather than a Wawa. What I first noticed was the demographic of the customers in the Wawa. Almost all of the people in the store were either hispanic or african american. With people suffering from poverty and a lack of cars in the parking lot, I realized that many of these people walked to the store probably because they didn’t have cars. As I browsed through each aisle I found that Wawa had a nice selection of milk, fresh bread, and cereals that anyone can afford. As I attempted to search the store for any food filled with quality nutrients that wasn’t a dairy or wheat, the number of options weren’t to thrilling. Wawa’s fresh fruit consisted of about 5 red apples, 3 bananas,

Computer based cash registers: Such systems automatically record various types of relevant data. Examples include employee codes, items and quantity purchased, totals due, type of

Have you ever tried listening to everything going on at the same time at a fast food restaurant during the lunch time rush hour? Well, I did and I am going to share the results of my whirlwind encounter last week. Within my observation, I will go over the layout of the establishment in which my observation was conducted, as well as who came to the establishment, the conversations and the interactions that took place. I hope you enjoy my observation and respect my findings from this visit.

Providing a self-check-out machine to save the customer’s time. Also, these machines will reduce the expenses that will be paid for the labours.

Every retail location carries a variety of products that distinguishes it from other stores in the same chain. Not surprisingly, it is difficult to achieve economies of scale. Supply Chain Mackey describes his consumers as being “part of a cult”. Whole Foods believes that the company’s emphasis on perishables and locally-sourced produce differentiates their stores from run-of-the-mill supermarkets and attracts loyal and devoted customers. However, “fresh produce” is one of the most challenging product categories to operate due to limited product shelf life and high cost of spoilage. Whole Foods has tried to circumvent most of the problems inherent in supplying fresh produce to its stores by sourcing locally and having short and flexible supply chains. In the case of fruits and vegetables, Whole Foods has buying relationships with local farmers who supply the store with seasonal produce. Thus, if one farmer is unable to produce a sufficient amount of yellow corn or heirloom tomatoes, the shortfall can be made up by another farmer. Although challenging to perfect, these short supply chains are agile and difficult for other big retailers to duplicate.

The others were excluded due to not meeting the qualifications of being a licensed food store and the owner choosing not to participate. East Harlem had 173 stores that participated, which consisted mainly of small bodegas and Upper East Harlem had 151 stores, which had far fewer bodegas and more supermarkets. The research results discovered that Upper East Harlem stores were 3.2 times inclined to have all the item in stock and was considered desirable stores (Horowitz et al.,2004). The cost of the items was higher in Upper East Harlem as compared to East Harlem. East Harlem had more stores in the proximity of its community (Horowitz et al.,2004). These findings suggest that further studies are needed to figure out why East Harlem, having twice as many stores but only 18% of their stores carried all five items as compared to 58% for Upper East Harlem (Horowitz et al., 2004). The article reference that prior studies in 2002 which noted that conveniences and location of dietary food as being more important to minorities and people of low social, economic status. Many minorities depend on small bodegas for their shopping which are the stores that do not always carry to best nutritious food. The whites do not have a problem with going out of their community to shop for better food selections. They have more, large supermarkets in their communities, which usually have

Specialty grocery stores have grown in attractiveness to customers, but the main issue is that often specialty stores have restricted locations which in turn limits their reach to customers. Whole Food’s Market and Trader Joe’s are two specialty grocery stores who have increased locations to the hundreds while adhering to an unforeseen market standing for formerly untargeted market segment.

With respect to staffing, I found that I initially had trouble serving customers quickly enough during peak hours. Customers dissatisfied with their queue times often left the store, resulting in lost sales.

point of sale system. The POS system is a perpetual inventory counting method that electronically records items immediately upon their point of sale (Stevenson, 2015, pg. 552). In other words, as a cashier scans a customer 's groceries, each scanned item is automatically recorded in the system and deducted from the store’s inventory. Implementing a point of sale would benefit a business’s inventory management function in several ways. First, the POS system will provide managers with a continuous flow of updated information (Stevenson, 2015, pg. 552). As a result, the information will provide more accuracy when used for sales forecasts and analysis, which substantially affect inventory decisions. Continuously, this inventory system would also allow greater flexibility in the sense that it can be wirelessly linked to the main company’s inventory system, creating a network of the company’s inventory systems. The POS system is capable of tracking many operations at once and can be modified according to management’s needs (MacCarthy, n.d.). This flexibility would undoubtedly benefit a large company like Wegman’s with many store locations. Lastly, the system is able to help businesses maintain a high level of customer service. Because the system gives customers a receipt with the price and quantity of each item purchased, the customer is able to see exactly what he or she purchased. This practice

The fast food, or quick service restaurant industry (QSR), represents approximately 200,000 restaurants and $155 billion in sales in the U.S. alone, they are one of the largest segments of the food industry (Hoovers, 2011). This segment of the restaurant industry is “highly competitive and fragmented… number, size and strength of competitors vary by region, market and even restaurant. All of these restaurants compete based on a number of factors, including taste, quality, speed of service, price and value, name recognition, restaurant location, customer service and the ambience and condition of each restaurant” (Chipotle, 2010).

Marketed as ‘America’s healthiest grocery store’ the company has successfully grown to 408 stores across the world with sales of $14 billion in 2014 (Whole Foods Market, 2015). The firm is positioned as an upmarket grocery due to the emphasis on natural, organic origins, and as a result are able to charge a premium for their products. Through efficiently running its operations and stores, Whole Foods are able to maintain healthy 4.02% profit margins (Financial Times, 2015) and operating margins well above the American grocery store industry average at 6.58% (Bloomberg, 2015). Looking at 2015’s quarter 1 figures it is clear to see that Whole Foods have had a hugely successful year with sales of $4.7 billion, up 10% from the same period last year. Furthermore, they opened 9 new stores and have signed a further 11 new leases.

Whole Foods Market in Beverly Hills is located in an upper class area, therefore mostly the whole clientele I interviewed was either residents of the area or workers coming in for lunch. This particular store location was interesting because it was surrounded by all apartments and even located under one. When you go to a store you probably expect the store to be surrounded by other businesses and not be located in a residential area; this was my first shocker. What was interesting about this Whole Foods is that it had its own private parking in the building; I’ve mostly noticed this in stores that are located in upper class areas. The color scheme for the store and the building was brown, green, and a hint of white. It looked very bland as

Notably, with technology advances, everything has become so easy and fast such that we all want every other aspect of our lives to assume a similar concept, and fortunately, the fast food restaurants provide a suitable means of satisfying our hungry stomachs as fast and easy as possible. Surprisingly, most people have adapted a lifestyle that incorporates fast food chains as an important element. For instance, instead of making coffee at home in the morning, I buy coffee on my way to college, for lunch, I buy a sandwich or hamburger from a food truck, and in the evening after a tiring exhaustive day, I order pizza for supper from Pizza Hut. Arguably, food take-outs are part my daily routine, which serves the purpose efficiently but barely sufficiently.

Whole Foods Market has expanded by a mixture of opening its own new stores and acquiring already existing stores. Today WFM does not follow this strategy, instead their motivation is to open its own large stores. This is due to noticeable sales differences in larger stores as opposed to smaller stores. WFM locates these newer stores in upscale areas of urban metropolitan centers and high-traffic shopping locations. Not all WFMs are isolated structures; some are located in strip malls. WFM offers a larger selection of natural and organic foods than any other grocery store. WFMs marketing expenditure is extremely small. They spend a measly 0.5% of their revenues on advertising. Their chief marketing strategy relies on word-of-mouth. WFM strives to meet or exceed customer expectations. This is so customers receive competent, knowledgeable, and friendly service and become advocates of WFM. The employees here have a decentralized team approach for store operations. This is so some personnel, merchandising, and operating

A point of sales system is another great addition to nay growing business. The POS has many functions. The POS will contain a register for purchases, have the ability to track reports and menu maintenance, improve service speed, and enhance customer service. To increase service speed, the POS efficiently makes order entries that are then transferred to the kitchen. This results in fewer mistakes and the ability to track ticket and wait times. The system also has the function of splitting checks and makes card processing simple. This ensures more seat turnover and shorter wait times for the customers. In return this has the potential to increase revenue at every service. POS can create loyalty programs that ensure repeat customers and generate more sales of gift cards. POS provides operational control that analyzes “detailed reports to drill down on sales, server and restaurant performance” (NCR 2013). A software like ALOHA also provides a training interface that allows new employees to learn the system quickly. This reduces the cost a restaurant would ultimately have to pay on training new employees. The ALOHA system is very up to date with new technology trends, providing mobile and digital signage and cloud based solutions and social technologies. The variety of functions in a point of sales system makes it very attractive to new restaurant owners. The cost of a POS can range hundreds to thousands of dollars based on the size of the