Archived Backstocking Produce Questions

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How do I backstock produce and other perishables without barcodes on the physical product? Are they somewhere in the stockroom? Also when I pull some of these items like for example an apple and it says qty 1, do I just pull one apple and that's it? Or do I pull out the whole crate of apples? A backroom member told me that there is a different protocol for pulling something like a potato from a sack of potatoes, is this true? I also was told that for certain items they need to be in a box (ex mini orange bags), can anyone tell me which things I need to do that for primarily. Thanks
 
As far as I know, produce shouldn't be taken from the case and should be B-coded so backroom has something to scan.
 
I'm pretty familiar with the backroom coolers in a PFresh store, this is how I was trained/learned on my own:

Meat and produce should come in with a DPCI printed on a sticker on the box, just like dairy and frozen. The sticker with the DPCI doesn't look like the ones we get off the general merchandise truck, it's smaller and looks different, and honestly it's more challenging to find the DPCI because there's a lot of other print on the sticker. Best practice is that when the food delivery gets pushed the team B-Codes the boxes on the floor so we have something to scan and also a "received-on" date printed on the box. If they don't follow that practice, though, you will have to B-Code the boxes yourself in the back - in RF Apps go to Stockroom/Print Barcodes/Barcode with Date and have a portable printer loaded with the white labels. Use Barcode with Date because that one also includes a casepack quantity on the label, and then once you start pulling you should cross out the original quantity and write the remaining amount nearby.

As far as pulling - meat, produce and bakery are the only places in the store where you should have a partial casepack. The rest of the backroom, if you have to pull one out of the box, you're supposed to pull the whole box off the shelf. In the PFresh categories you leave the B-Coded box on the shelf because it will have the received date (from the B-Code) and the expiration date (printed on the box). When backstocking, make an extra effort to get the same DPCIs together so you can put the older meat or produce on top of/in front of/next to the older stuff, and when you have to pull that one you can take the oldest stuff first.

When you have to pull one apple or three oranges, yes you just pull whatever it asks out of the box and mark the updated quantity. Most of the produce has a quantity but some of them like onions will be PIPO - product in place only, so they will ask you "Did you pull all Y-es/N-o" to find out if you pulled everything out of the location or some still remains.
 
It's also important to make sure that you're FIFOing properly in and out of the backroom as well. In produce, you should be pulling items with the oldest Bcode date on them first, and in meat, the items that have the closest expiration date first. Keeping items with the same DPCI in the same location as much as possible, and organizing them by date will be a huge help with this.

Whoever handles your food truck backstock should be Bcoding each box with the UPC label and date. Since the majority of produce sells by freshness and doesn't have a printed expiration date on it, the date of receipt kind of serves as an "expiration date" of sorts for the market team, so that we know how long it's been in our store, and if we need to put it on TPC to sell through short dated product, or excess inventory. We also made labels for produce that sells by the each (lemons, apples, oranges, etc) and stuck them in a couple of those 12-slot softlines label holders and put one in the ambient room, and one in the produce cooler just in case the Bcode labels fall off (pretty common for bags of onions, potatoes, etc).

And yes, you should always pull the entire casepack, and backstock partial casepacks. Make sure you type in what you're actually taking out of the location though, and not what the PDA is asking you to, or else your counts are going to get messed up.
 
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I have to disagree with looseseal. You should only be pulling what the system is asking for. Doing it looseseal's way will keep the floor full and backstock counts accurate, but it creates a lot of extra work. You have to count out more than what the system needs to pull the item, and then you'll have to count it again when the extra comes back to be backstocked.
 
Yeah, only thing our BR guys pull full casepacks of are bananas, and in that case, they don't actually pull them, we (market TMs/PAs) do. Mostly works out except for creating the need for occasional standalone research.
 
I have to disagree with looseseal. You should only be pulling what the system is asking for. Doing it looseseal's way will keep the floor full and backstock counts accurate, but it creates a lot of extra work. You have to count out more than what the system needs to pull the item, and then you'll have to count it again when the extra comes back to be backstocked.

^This. Ain't nobody got time for that.
 
Why should you have to recount anything if you're correctly marking the quantities on the boxes? Or is there something I'm missing here? It's worked out just fine for us.
 
Even if you're subtracting what's written on the box, and the person pushing the caf subtracts what they put out from what's written on the box, and then writes the new quantity...you still have to backstock it again. That's extra work.
 
That said, if it works for your store then that's great. We're still trying to figure out what works for is a year after remodel lol. We have so many issues with counts being off in the backroom.

What do y'all do about the bcode labels that print with the wrong quantity?
 
Buuuut in cases where the accumulator is wonky for some items (like in our case I could QMOS one Gala apple out during the morning cull, and then our 7:30 CAF will want 15 more, even though the basket of Galas is still appropriately full), you'd be backstocking stuff anyways. I don't know... some stuff is just worth the little bit of extra work sometimes. Besides the morning autos, our hourly CAFs for produce, and especially meat aren't too big usually, so it doesn't end up affecting our workload too much (our PAs are in charge of getting produce and meat backstocked in the evening). But for a higher volume, busier store, I could definitely see how this would create more work.

The bcodes with the wrong quantities are so annoying. We don't have any solution for it yet, and I'm not sure if there's a way to change it. The only thing I can think of is if there's a way in store apps or something to change the casepack size associated with a certain item. A lot of times the ssp # was correct to begin with, and then the produce started coming from a different farm/distributer in a diffrerent sized casepack, but the ssp # never changed to reflect the new casepack size. I was thinking of Mysupporting it, but they're never any help anyways. We've already been fighting with them for the past two months to get product in that we haven't had since our Pfresh opened...
 
Our bcode have dates, not qty at my store.

Pick option 3 when printing the BCODE label. Date w/quantity.

When pulling meat & produce, we always pull the whole box. We keep boxes so we can properly rotate dates and can quickly go back & see what will be expiring soon. We don't backstock bananas, grapes or berries. We keep those on their own pallets and pull as needed.
 
Yeah, but watch it because the quantity the system spits out is not always correct. For instance, our tomatoes will print with a larger quantity then is actually in the box, so our counts were WAY off because they were A) being received and B) being backstocked by the system's quantity, not actual quantity. I think we ended up having to MySupport it to get it fixed.
 
I'll have to get with my TL/ETL about MySupporting to fix the inaccurate quantities on our B-Codes, we have quite a few of those. I used to backstock PFresh and would fix those by hand, but since I've moved out of that role things have gone downhill.

@looseseal: I'm all about pulling full casepacks and pushing to make sure the floor is full, but honestly in my store 1 person...just 1 out of the entire store, writes new quantities while pulling, and that's me. Now I rarely get the chance to pull PFresh so quantities never get adjusted on the boxes, and our backroom and food teams are so far behind anyway that pulling and re-stocking the whole box would never fly. In a perfect world or a better Target I'd be all about it, but for now we roll with pulling partials.

As a side note, I happen to know that in a few weeks my store is transitioning to Target food distribution. I've been told a few changes that will be happening, such as pick labels printed on every incoming box - no more B-Coding! - and now the food order will be pushed right along with the general merchandise truck, it used to be two separate events. Anyone else been through this transition yet, or is this something upcoming for everyone?
 
It's a transition that is slowly happening company wide as target builds more food distribution centers. My store transitioned to a target FDC a couple of months after we finished out remodel.

Most items will have pick labels. Fresh meats will still have to be barcoded along with some produce and items over a certain weight (I wanna say 20 lbs). Some pick labels (I've noticed it's mostly frozen) won't scan. In those cases, you either have to keys the DPCI or print a barcode. The quantities can still be off on the pick label, but not that often.

Depending on what time and day your FDC deliveries arrive, and how your store chooses to handle them, you might have the regular truck team push the FDC truck, or you might have another smaller team dedicated to pushing the FDC truck.

Eventually, there will be an unload process for the food truck like there is with a GM truck. Right now the FDC trailers are push alls. The eventual goal is that the unload will take less than 30 minutes and will be sorted on the line onto flats for each aisle or valley. It will also take care of direct backstock too.
 
It's a transition that is slowly happening company wide as target builds more food distribution centers. My store transitioned to a target FDC a couple of months after we finished out remodel.

Most items will have pick labels. Fresh meats will still have to be barcoded along with some produce and items over a certain weight (I wanna say 20 lbs). Some pick labels (I've noticed it's mostly frozen) won't scan. In those cases, you either have to keys the DPCI or print a barcode. The quantities can still be off on the pick label, but not that often.

Depending on what time and day your FDC deliveries arrive, and how your store chooses to handle them, you might have the regular truck team push the FDC truck, or you might have another smaller team dedicated to pushing the FDC truck.

Eventually, there will be an unload process for the food truck like there is with a GM truck. Right now the FDC trailers are push alls. The eventual goal is that the unload will take less than 30 minutes and will be sorted on the line onto flats for each aisle or valley. It will also take care of direct backstock too.

That almost sounds too good to be true. Getting the pfresh trucks done at my store are like pulling teeth with the logistics team. So much drama going on I want to lock myself in a cooler & cry for half my shift.
 
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