Commerce Produce is a Produce and Deli Market that opened in 1993. They turned to Sintel Systems, a Southern California leader in POS and Surveillance. Commerce Produce and Deli needed an inventory and pos system to better manage their operation. Sintel Systems performed an assessment to meet and exceed their goals for improving operation’s performance.
The market has an inventory of about 2500 unique items. They used cash registers to process orders. They have two cash register counters, and two sections for butchers at the deli. Cashiers use plu’s and scales and for these items, and the butchers use scales and lookups for prices on their items. Goods are not sold at the butcher’s area.
They have 7 employees which are comprised of cashiers, managers, butchers and inventory stockers. They have no way to report sales by hour, to schedule labor. They must use experience and hand based record keeping. As with all punch card systems, they have to manually add the hours and breaks as well. They don’t have an integrated reporting tool for comparison of past sales and labor cost.
Inventory management is a constant chore. When relying on vendor representatives to help provide re-order sheets, and when managers are out, keeping track of inventory is difficult. They have no end of day report that tells them they are low, or require re-ordering of any items. They have to generate new orders by hand and recall these paper orders when the shipment comes in.
They have no computer management of inventory reconciliation. This in turn with no computer record of food waste and product shrinkage is a gap in their inventory oversight that needs to be fixed. Their documentation is split into multiple areas.
Goals for Point of Sale
- POS System for their cashiers
- Meat and Deli Scale System with Inventory Management
- Price Tier System for bulk purchases
- Purchasing Control
- Integrating WIC and EBT support for payments
- Integrated Labor Scheduling and Time Clock for Payroll Control
- Labeling of weighed Deli Foods
- Integrated Scale support of Deli Foods
- Inventory Reconciliation
- Inventory Re-Ordering Lists
POS Software Choice:
Sintel Systems integrated software was decided as the POS software to be installed at the site.
Sintel Systems was chosen because of some of the implementations required to meet the goals of Commerce Produce & Deli. In their case they need to perform both restaurant style operations for the Deli. The use of Restaurant Menu Screen, and of course use of Retail functions for the Cashiers.
Sintel Systems ability to operate multiple styles of business in one location is a major benefit because it allows maximum flexibility for covering the nuances of their goals.
POS Hardware Choice:
Sintel Systems delivered 4 POS-X All-In-One computers. The cashier stations each have customer displays, and integrated card readers.
POS Avery Scales are used at each station, for the deli and the cashier stations.
High speed thermal printers by POS-X are at the cashier stations.
The Deli stations use Zebra label printers for labeling the meats and other weighed deli items.
The cashier’s use Orbit Scanners for inventory items and items from the deli. An omni-directional, in-counter bar code scanner that speeds up checkout with its high throughput and first-pass read rates.
Commerce Produce also had a server installed with raid drives for redundancy. They used a high grade professional net gear router.
Implementation:
Based on the review of their operations the implementation of the system required several phases.
Phase 1. Networking
Sintel wired the site for the cashier stations and the deli stations. They also wired for the server.
Phase 2 a/b. Computer installation. Inventory import. Basic Software Setup.
Inventory Imported: 1300 items were imported. All their attributes were included in the import, from department types, categories, as well as barcodes, descriptions and more.
Basic Software Setup: Sintel Systems provides a quick and easy tool to setup a business. The control panel offers all of the settings needed to setup the Market and Sintel Systems assisted in was up in running with inventory included, in just a couple hours after software and hardware installation.
Register Installation– 2 Cashier Stations were first installed. The transactions were being processed within the day. The cashiers would scan items from the import. It allowed Sintel Systems to process about 1300 items in about an hour. The work was provided to them by a compilation of purchasing from the Commerce Produce management and other spreadsheets they had on file.
Deli Installation: The site ran for 2 weeks before the installation of the installation of the deli stations. The stations were installed, and the menu added. The menu allows the butchers to use a touch screen input for orders by customers. They can also schedule events such as catering events. Each order is processed into the inventory system as it’s placed. The label’s are printed on the items for packaging. The butchers can also pre-package items that are also inventoried.
Phase 3. Basic Operational Training.
Sintel Systems has been providing a high level of training and consultation of Point of Sale for years. Their expertise ensured that the basic operations of Sintel Systems were up and running on the first day. This allowed commerce to seamlessly continue their sales during the transition.
Phase 4. Inventory Training for Reconciliation, Re-Ordering. Labor Scheduling. Report Tuning and Operational Oversight management.
Sintel is working with Commerce Produce and Deli to work with the inventory cycle management provided by the software application. They can use the reporting tools from day one for restocking and re-ordering. Their vendors were imported. Re-Order lists can be immediately generated upon the verification of inventory
