Bizerba Sets New Standards In Fresh Produce Management

The challenges which food retailers are faced with every day are becoming more and more complex: high energy costs, small profit margins and increasing pressure of competition are just a few examples. Qualified advice at point of sale (POS) and more transparency in consumer information are also in increasing demand. The technology company Bizerba is presenting a new complete solution at the NRF Annual Convention 2009 (11th - 14th January 2009), with which food retailers can gain enormous competitive advantages through the targeted use of IT.

Bizerba is revolutionising fresh produce management and optimising the sales process with the new complete package of the shop scales system K - consisting of a standard operating system WePOS and the retail framework developed by Bizerba including a comprehensive content database. "We are specifically reacting to the new demands which food retailers face day-to-day with our new IT solution. We are not simply supplying a new model range of scales but are offering a technological and industry targeted expertise for fresh produce management", emphasises Matthias Harsch, Managing Director and Company Spokesperson at Bizerba.

"As the saying "time is money" today is not just highly topical for the retail trade as a result of heavily increased energy prices, an efficient merchandise management system is more and more necessary for a quick sale", continues Harsch. RetailFramework is therefore based on the merchandise management software WinCWS. "Thus retailers can make an enquiry at any time about how large the fresh stocks are and then order correspondingly." The availability of actual product data is a significant requirement of the management of fresh produce, says the Bizerba Managing Director. With the new solution Bizerba also takes into account the development that scale displays are being increasingly used for digital advertising tactics, promotions and couponing. Initial experiences substantiate that item based income can be increased by 20 percent with little expenditure and a smaller campaign.

With the RetailImpact software package the traders can incorporate advertising but also legally-required consumer information and labelling directly on their PC scale displays. The templates for this can be accessed via the internet. "Whether it is advice about specialty foods or allergies, fat or calorie content more and more customers have targeted questions about products, origin, composition, storage, which our solution can provide a quick answer to and convey additional competency and trust", says Harsch. If the customer asks for a certain cheese there is also a suitable red wine suggestion to go with it. The scales are kind of permanently in dialogue with the sales assistant and customer, supporting every sales situation.

The new solution which Bizerba is presenting to the public at NRF booth 371 does not just promote service orientation and improve customer loyalty but also simplifies merchandise knowledge and training measures for sales personnel. The possibilities of printing out recipes and cross selling offers generate additional earnings. The system enables direct maintenance of content and advertising saving on operating costs and individual adjustments are also possible without any problems.

About Bizerba:
Bizerba is a worldwide market leading technology company operating in many fields for professional system solutions for weighing, information and food service technology in the retail, industry and logistics sectors. Trade specific hard and software, high performance network-compatible management systems as well as a wide range of labels, consumables and business services cater for the transparent control of integrated business processes and the high availability of Bizerba specific characteristics. With over 2,900 employees, shares in a total of 34 companies in 22 countries and 54 country representations worldwide in 2007 Bizerba GmbH & Co. KG had a turnover in the group of 430 million Euros. The company head-office is in Balingen, there are further manufacturing plants in Meßkirch, Bochum, Shanghai and San Louis Potosi (Mexico).

SOURCE: Bizerba