STORES Magazine - March 2009 - (Page 36)

NUTS AND BOLTS / POS Over the past few years, Ferro has focused on developing the technology so that it can work with multiple POS systems. “We had to create a solution that was agnostic,” he says. Ferro launched Nutricate’s enterprise product offering last summer, with Silvergreens’ two locations serving as the initial customers. Nutricate now works with several hospitals and school districts, along with restaurant chains Extreme Pita and Red Mango. The capacity to provide the system is now reaching mainstream status, says Jason Rambler, product marketing manager with NCR, which offers two-sided printing as an option on all its printers. NCR also has licensed the technology to many paper mills, allowing them to sell the receipt paper to any company interested in it. Do customers notice? Do customers truly read the backs of their receipts? The answer is a resounding “yes,” says VanDemark. “We’ve watched them. They flip the receipt a couple of times and smile” as they review the information.” Many times, he says, a customer will talk with his or her family member or friend about the information on the receipt. Moreover, it’s not just calories and fat grams. “This is great for both nutrition and marketing,” Ferro says. For instance, a restaurant can use the back of the receipt to offer a dessert promotion that expires within a matter of hours. A quick-service restaurant could include games and puzzles on the receipt to keep customers occupied and shorten perceived wait times. And utilizing the backs of receipts is more environmentally friendly than simply making the receipts longer. Shorter receipts also are faster to print, easier for customers to handle and require fewer roll changes. The Nutricate system fits well with Silvergreens’ environmentally friendly approach to business; the newest location was certified as “green” by the Built 36 STORES / MARCH 2009 Green Santa Barbara program. What’s more, the Nutricate application has affected customers’ behavior, says general manager Brian Rocha. In part, that’s because the system prints questions and tidbits of information on the receipts. For instance, the system may point out that substituting honey wheat for French bread on a half-sandwich will save 40 calories. The application consists of a small piece of hardware called a Receipt Intercept Computer (RIC), which sits between the printer and the POS. The RIC controls what’s printed on the receipt: “Nutrition is scratching the surface,” Rambler says. “It can do coupons, warranties and return policies.” Per-item numbers-crunching The restaurateur enters and updates nutritional information through a web-based application. In fact, perhaps the greatest amount of work comes in determining the nutritional content of the food, especially if the restaurant has to gather the information from scratch. This requires a fair amount of numbers-crunching, although software can assist at a cost of $25 to $100 per menu item, Ferro says. Given Silvergreens’ made-fromscratch menu, Rocha and his staff manually gathered the information and completed the calculations. The entire effort took several months, but now that it’s done, Rocha can simply log in to update the database if a change of vendor impacts the caloric or fat content of a type of cheese, for example. Once the nutrition information was assembled, installing the system took several weeks, Rocha says. Salespeople don’t need any training, although they do need to make sure that they’re accounting for any menu modifications that customers request. Two-sided printing still costs more than single-sided because a second thermal print head is required, but that premium is slowly disappearing, Rocha says. Younger people, in particular, seem attuned to the receipts and often read through the information with their parents. Moreover, while some food-service companies see Nutricate as a tool to improve sales, others are using it to modify behavior. Silvergreens has “seen a significant increase in modifications since making the suggestions,” Rocha says. In addition, the redemption rate of coupons issued through the Nutricate system averages 4 to 5 percent, roughly twice that for most coupons. StORES Karen M. Kroll is a business writer based in Minnetonka, Minn. WWW.STORES.ORG http://WWW.STORES.ORG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of STORES Magazine - March 2009

STORES Magazine - March 2009 Contents Executive Editor's Page President's Page Movers and Spenders What Shoppers Think Take Your Laundry Online 10 Things You May Have Missed Numbers Worth Counting Full Price/Markdown Retail People Luxury for Less Q & A CONCEPT2WATCH Checkout Management Online Entrepreneurs Sustainability POS Online Strategy Online Scheduling SaaS Online Marketing Merchandise Security PCI Compliance LPinformation Supplier Directory Exception Reporting Industry Perspective Theft Research LOEB Retail Letter ARTS Update Point of View NRF News Retail Crossword Retail Industry Calendar End Cap

STORES Magazine - March 2009

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