Archived Best practice - STL opinion

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So what is best practice for pushing the C&S truck?

Had a semi long chat with my STL today and it is his opinion that the PA is to lead this process (a least once a week) to make sure all perishable product is pushed, becoded and sent to backstock properly.

PA is not necessarily supposed to push it but rather over see the process is done properly by the sales floor team. I shared that I thought it was best practice the full truck was supposed to be pushed by the flow team and backstocked by he backroom. He said it was now to be an all store push with the PA leading the process if the CTL was not on the schedule. I asked if the whole store was supposed to push the produce and meat? He said that would not be a good idea and I as the PA could do that after the freezer and cooler was done, after all it is supposed the just a 20-30 minute process. I asked when was supposed to get my qmos, cull, cafs, autofills, cleaning tasks, SDAs and produce and meat done along with making sure the freezer and cooler was done? He again said I am making more of this than necessary because it is just a 30 minute process at most.

He also said that it is best practice for the PA to be involved in he freezer/cooler push. I again insisted that it was best practice for the flow team to push the truck lead by a team lead not the PA. Am I just wrong? Am I supposed to be running this process? Oh and btw I receive the C&S truck in, temp it and with the help of one other team member put the pallets in the coolers and freezer. We also have to replace the pallets that were not ours on the truck so that takes a good chunk of my time. We are not a high volume store so it is just 1 freezer, 1 cooler, and two produce pallets (pro1 & pro2) that are not huge but big enough.
 
That is how my store used to do it until we got a new STL. Flow team would take care of the whole process of pfresh excluding meat and produce. Backroom would backstock, also excluding meat and produce. PA would handle anything related to meat and produce. Our flow TL would get the pallets out of the truck and flow team would also bring it out. This process put a heavy burden on flow team though, making it nearly impossible to finish our regular 2400 piece truck by 8am.

So this is our new process that our new STL put into effect. We no longer have pfresh trucks on days we have our regular trucks. So now we have a truck everyday, either regular or pfresh. We have a team of about seven people who are scheduled to do specifically the early morning autofills and the pfresh process. Instead of bringing pallets of pfresh out on the floor, it is separated into its respected aisles on flatbeds on the line. One or two flats are brought out at a time while the rest are in the freezer or cooler. This team does everything related pfresh; pushing freezer, cooler, meat, and produce as well as backstocking it. The PA helps with everything as well. The process takes longer, but it is more efficient. We don't have flow team feeling the pressure of getting it done asap and not FIFOing properly. There is less merch getting QMOS'd, less backstock, and just less complaining all around.

From what I know though, the general best practice is what your STL is suggesting. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work for our store. I would bring up that maybe your flow team lead should be taking care of the truck aspect of it all (taking temp, getting pallets out of truck) while you're out on the floor helping push and managing the team members over in your area.
 
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That is how my store used to do it until we got a new STL. Flow team would take care of the whole process of pfresh excluding meat and produce. Backroom would backstock, also excluding meat and produce. PA would handle anything related to meat and produce. Our flow TL would get the pallets out of the truck and flow team would also bring it out. This process put a heavy burden on flow team though, making it nearly impossible to finish our regular 2400 piece truck by 8am.

So this is our new process that our new STL put into effect. We no longer have pfresh trucks on days we have our regular trucks. So now we have a truck everyday, either regular or pfresh. We have a team of about seven people who are scheduled to do specifically the early morning autofills and the pfresh process. Instead of bringing pallets of pfresh out on the floor, it is separated into its respected aisles on flatbeds on the line. One or two flats are brought out at a time while the rest are in the freezer or cooler. This team does everything related pfresh; pushing freezer, cooler, meat, and produce as well as backstocking it. The PA helps with everything as well. The process takes longer, but it is more efficient. We don't have flow team feeling the pressure of getting it done asap and not FIFOing properly. There is less merch getting QMOS'd, less backstock, and just less complaining all around.

From what I know though, the general best practice is what your STL is suggesting. Unfortunately, it just doesn't work for our store. I would bring up that maybe your flow team lead should be taking care of the truck aspect of it all (taking temp, getting pallets out of truck) while you're out on the floor helping push and managing the team members over in your area.

This is about word for word what happened at my store. C+S is worked on the days we arent pushing normal truck. Before, we would have a set ammount of people scheduled to push after the normal truck but the problem was sometimes the freaking truck didnt show up on time sometimes so we lost time for pushing. This is when we were a 4am flow push though. They switched it over to 6am a while back. Right now we have a team of 4-5 and there is usually one PA scheduled for it along with another PA being there for Market itself or the CTL. So whoever is in market doesnt necessarily have to oversee or help if the team is not behind. On monday though I had to help since we had a large load so from 9-1 I was just pushing and not able to do any other market tasks, but its how it goes. We also do the breakdown of pallets onto flats and I do like it alot better than dragging a pallet on the floor AND its best practice to break it onto flats.
 
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My entire district is doing everything by best practice at my store.

In regards to C and S trucks, the truck is part of the logistics process. So whoever was looking up the best practices at my store, decided that the p fresh trucks are to be run by the logistics team. Flow pushes EVERYTHING and backroom is "suppose" to backstock everything with in the 3 hours window. Well the entire p fresh truck process is supposed to be done within 3 hours, including the backstock. Also, I was told by multiple ETLs, my STL and the logistics ETL that the entire flow team is supposed to stop what they are doing and push the p fresh truck. So accommodate this, they switched our truck day from Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday to Monday, Wednesday, Friday. They did this so the p fresh truck will be there at the same time as the entire flow team (we get GM trucks MWF.) We were told that we PAs and CTL are no longer responsible for the truck process, including backstocking.

So according to the leaders in my district, if you are a 4am store, the p fresh truck process is the logistics team responsibility. This includes taking the temp, to unloading, to pushing and to backstocking.

Heck, just search for "trailer unload food process" or "C and S trailer unload food process" under workbench to find the best practice.

With that being said, is your flow team and backroom team meeting their goal times with pfresh in the mix? Our team always has to play catch up when we were in charge of pfresh truck push. And backroom would sometimes have a pallet of backstock just sitting in the cooler and freezer for longer than a day, untouched.
 
Well I just don't get it. Had the truck on Thursday. I received it in, temped it and got it put in the proper temps. ETL walked away after opening the door for the drivers. I say drivers because our Pizza Hut order came at the same time. As ETL walked away I heard "take care of that delivery also" wtf I don't even know anything about this order. Finally got to start my cull at 6:50

I pushed pro1&2 and meat autofill and caf. Before I could get to pro and meat pallet to fill the holes I did SDAs right after I called that out the ETL said oh good you can help with dairy and freezer now. Really? When will pro and meat get done so I can do a proper order. I got those done and went to lunch. When I got back I back stocked them. I was to.d by the BR TL and tm that they did not have time to do it.
 
This is just whack! No one touched Saturdays produce or meat pallets. No push, no BCODE, no back stock done. Just left it for me to do.
 
This is just whack! No one touched Saturdays produce or meat pallets. No push, no BCODE, no back stock done. Just left it for me to do.

Go up chain in following order and document: ctl, etl, stl and if necessary dtl and food biz partner
 
This is just whack! No one touched Saturdays produce or meat pallets. No push, no BCODE, no back stock done. Just left it for me to do.

WTF is your CTL doing...sounds like they are running one crappy department...do you even have a CTL? From everything you have said it sure doesnt seem like it or your CTL is really bad
 
TLs recently did a shift in my store. Former CTL is still in the building and happy to no longer hold that title.

Just got told by another TL that discussions have been happening because BR #s are going red. They (not including me in this conversation) feel that meat would probably be easier to bs if it was not kept in their original cases :faint: also the produce cooler would be more likely to get bs if it did not have a green rack to leave produce on again :faint: my answers to both of these ideas when I was told was "would not it just be easier to get people trained properly and hold them accountable?"

If either of these two "solutions" get implemented I expect the meat and pro coolers to go blood red, steritech visits to go red and I expect to be fully held accountable.
 
TLs recently did a shift in my store. Former CTL is still in the building and happy to no longer hold that title.

Just got told by another TL that discussions have been happening because BR #s are going red. They (not including me in this conversation) feel that meat would probably be easier to bs if it was not kept in their original cases :faint: also the produce cooler would be more likely to get bs if it did not have a green rack to leave produce on again :faint: my answers to both of these ideas when I was told was "would not it just be easier to get people trained properly and hold them accountable?"

If either of these two "solutions" get implemented I expect the meat and pro coolers to go blood red, steritech visits to go red and I expect to be fully held accountable.

That sounds terrible....Also...how are they going to pull produce with no green rack to put the pulls on..leaving it on the floor?? And the meat idea is just....no words...

IDK if your store does this but anything that is in a casepack in produce, meat or bakery, if anything has been pulled from it we mark how much is in the box with one of the black markers above the bcode label. If there is allready a count there we just cross it out and right above or to the right of it. Makes it alot easier if you have worked out 4 apples and there is say 30 left in the box...Backroom doesnt have to count them.
 
Yes I do do this. I also date and mark what is inside a box at the time of initial bcode and backstock. It just makes life easier if those things are on the front rather than on the side.
What a laugh..... ETL log. today said "well your rack is full because the backroom team that pulled everything does not know what is fresh and what is not" former CTL said "the team does not have time to push produce at night because the store is so busy and they need to get a good zone in. Oh and you (I) should be pushing so that everything is full in the morning for the guests all day" felt like I was being told to over push in the morning so that no one else would have to till the next day. This just gets more fun each day. I hate "change" especially when new supervisors think that they have such better ideas
 
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What does C&S stand for? We just call it the FDC truck so I'm curious.

But yes, our flow team pushes everything, bcodes, and sends it to backroom to be backstocked. Do you not bring in flow team on these days or are they just doing pulls?

We don't actually write the count on the box, I should start doing that.
 
Wow the flow team bcodes?! That's awesome! Once a case is opened, they take it out. I hate when they bring back one less than the case quantity on a tub. We don't sell produce though.
 
PA0701...I swear you're at my store, but since I'm the only PA there I guess you're not. I totally understand your pain. Our BR #s are blood red for the coolers and freezers. I've started marking out the casepack qty on all but full casepacks that aren't by weight to make our backroom team count. The BRTL hates the partial casepacks in the meat and produce coolers. I've had to fight him everyday and stress to him that leaving produce and meat in the original casepack is BP and the only way to tell what is the oldest receive date. Otherwise you can't TPC according to BP. Or pull and push older product. I actually had to explain to him that like items should be backstocked together because backroom was just backstocking stuff wherever they felt like. So of course, older product sits in section e while newer product in section A gets pulled. Backroom pulls full casepacks while keying the requested qty, whether or not they match. I have to push all of the autofills for the freezer and cooler everyday because flow just doesn't. Half the push team doesn't rotate. I also have to push and backstock meat pallets.

Instead of backstocking everyday in the freezer and coolers, BR lets it all pile up because "it's cold in there!" Yeah, by all means let the 5 original items to backstock yesterday turn into an entire green rack three days later so you can spend longer in the freezer and complain about how much backstock there is. I used to help the team out and backstock my caf overstock. Not anymore. I quit helping push the rest of the truck too. I get no help from backroom or flow, so I'm done helping them. They can handle all of it (save for meat I guess).

We started with 4 racks in the backroom dedicated to BAKE. The BRTL thought it would be a good idea to take away a rack of bakery and give it to frozen. I told him that we were just light on bakery at that time and that it's going to fill back up, but he wouldn't hear it. Not a week later we had an entire pallet of bakery and nowhere to backstock it. Fast forward to two months later and we've had nothing but issues with counts, location accuracy, and burning batches since bakery is stacked four high on the top shelf. The BRTL's solution? Get rid of the partial casepacks of bakery and put it in wacos. I told him that the casepack is the only thing that has the actual expiration date on it. I told him that getting rid of the wacos in a couple sections would actually take care of the problem better. His response: my team doesn't count what's in the casepacks and they're burning batches because they don't want to count or pull from the bottom of a stack of boxes. The logical thing to do would be to coach the tms. They all know what they're supposed to be doing. Some of them just don't do it. But of course, managing team member performance isn't the solution for my backroom TL. So just this week they emptied the partial casepacks. So now we have completely empty casepack locations that we don't have use for and wacos that are stuffed to the brim.

And that's just backroom and flow. There are all kinds of issues on the salesfloor that I have no time to fix. One PA can not get everything done when they have no support from the rest of the store. My CTL shouldn't be a CTL. They just can't handle how much there is to do over there. And my ETL just adds tasks everyday without thinking about how time said tasks require. I cannot clean the milk trays that have never been cleaned, check the depth of fill on all the endcaps in grocery, reprint signs that someone took down by mistake, check sidecap fill, sweep and mop the coolers, do his sales walk, set the remaining 15 salesplanners for all of grocery, and clean the milk doors on an order day. I can do some of that, but I am one person who maybe has 1 hr of spare time per day. Then when I ask for help I get told no. He doesn't even have anyone close market. :facepalm:
 
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As much as I have expressed my concerns and dissapointments about the Pfresh at my store and the leaders doing this or expecting that I have come to the realization my store must have some of the best leaders in general. Just reading that last post by Sigma and reading the orginal post I have thankful I dont work in that environment and wouldnt be able to stay there without going crazy. For the most part my leadership leaves market to be ran by the CTL and 2 PAs and for the most part everything runs very smoothly. My backroom TL is awesome and has been with the company for a few years. Hes actually my "Mentor" for me becoming a TL.
 
Also Sigma....your telling me you only have an opener for market and no closer ever??? WTF is that...so you guys have like 60 hours for market and thats it? I think that the CTL should be someone who is very VERY HI-POTENTIAL or the very least one of the best TLs in the store. We all know of those TLs that arent very good but if they are in some areas it doesnt go noticed as much. CTL??? Forget about it. The only time your department wouldnt be terrible is if you had 2 AMAZING PAs. I just got a new TL and while they are getting the hang of it theres still A LOT to learn. This months focus is supposed to be on Market yet we have missed a Sunday order twice now in the last 3 weeks, are you kidding me. Of course the one time in those 3 weeks it didnt get missed is when I was there. When I was told this on Monday I just had to shake my head....HOW DO YOU FORGET THE ORDER?? Especially AGAIN after it JUST happened 2 weeks prior.
 
I would also like to point out that doing the CTLs job is not as easy as it looks. Especially if you dont have a great supporting cast. I had to fill in for my TL for 8-10 weeks and it was probably the most stressed out I have ever been working in Pfresh. If your Vendors are like the ones I have we have to constantly harass and get on them to do the most basic of things. You would think they would want their product to, idk, actually be IN STOCK!!! To sell but apparently they dont think so. Our bread looked terrible over and over and over and we kept being out of stock on almost everything. Despite being marked red week after week and having to talk to them EVERY single time they came in they still didnt fix it until my ETL got on their supervisor about it. This is just one example of many about our terrible vendors.

Although me filling in along with the other PA leaving for another job at the same time probably helped some in the stress department as I felt it was really ONLY me working and getting anything done over there that was extra aside from the very basics of Pfresh.
 
Sigma7, seriously we ARE in the same store. How can this be? Everything you shared is my living nightmare.. well my log. TL seems to be understanding my frustrations more but still has to way to help me out. It seems like he is up against a wall with everything his team needs to get done.

We also only have the morning person in pFresh. Afternoon and evening people are scheduled but they are always put someplace else. You can't miss their initials in the books for completing afternoon and evening tasks in the ambient room though. They are good at writing that, not doing them but definitely good are writing they did.
 
pfreshdude-
You heard right. No scheduled closers for market. We started with 140 hours for market when we finished the remodel. That was enough for my CTL to get 40, one PA to get 40, and the other two PAs to get 30 apiece. The CTL and full time PA worked mostly mornings while I and the other PA worked mostly mids and closing. We were still trying to get all the routines down. Closing was rough because we were responsible for all of grocery. One part timer quit because it was normal to come in for a closing shift and walk into all of the pulls from the day piled up (many times including the autofills), truck still left to be pushed, salesplanners to fill, an empty banana table, and empty milk doors. This was with the CTL and a PA there in the morning. MY store really had the wrong people in place. There were days that the CTL or full time PA didn't do the order, so that was another 30-45 minutes at night getting the order done. There was a night where my SrTL (formerly the CTL) had me push truck all night and not do any zoning because flow received the truck but had no hours to push it and the floor was empty.

Once the other part timer quit my ETL stopped scheduling mids and I only closed. I didn't get a weekend off or even two days off in a row for 7 weeks. Seven straight weeks of closing M/W/F/Sa/Su. Then the full time PA transferred to another store. So now I only open. I'm off M/Tr and work 6-230 T/W/F/Sa/Su. Haven't had a weekend off in five weeks and haven't had more than one day off consecutively in as much time. My CTL closes on Tuesdays and is off Wednesday. So he opens market on Mondays and Thursdays and works at 8 three other days. He closes a fri, and then a sat and sun, once every six weeks. All that to say that market went from having 140 hrs/week to now having 80 hrs/week. The only time anyone is ever scheduled to close is when my CTL closes, so one night a week.

My CTL was already struggling when he just had dry market, he was struggling when we went PFresh and had three PAs. Now nothing but the most basic tasks are getting done. Salesplanners? nope. Vendor relations? nope. Cleaning? nope. Zoning at night? nope.

It's now normal to walk into all the cafs from after 2 or 3 the day before plus the autofills and a crap zone. I'm going back to school full time in 2 weeks and going on LOA in the fall. My ETL still hasn't hired a replacement for me. In two weeks I'll only be working two days a week and won't have time to train anyone. I just couldn't care less at this point. I get no support from my ETLs or STLs. The sad thing is that we are one of the top performing PFresh's from this past cycle on many of the metrics (mostly sales stuff...definitely not BRLA). Our store comp sales are huge and grocery comp is even higher. Grocery is now over 25% of our store sales and it gets zero support. I told my ETL that when I come back from LOA that I'm not going back to grocery so just go ahead and replace me. And I'm pretty sure my CTL is about to quit or get performanced out. The PA spot has been posted for two weeks and no one has applied for it. I don't blame them.
 
I also totally agree that only a Hi-Po should be a CTL. There is just so much to keep up with over there. CTL is not an easy job. My CTL makes it very obvious that you shouldn't place a brand new TL in the CTL role unless they are very high potential. Target also shouldn't place a brand new ETL as an ETL-HL at a newly remodeled PFresh store. There's a reason why there is (or used to be at least) a SrETL-Food in most SuperTs. It's an area that takes a lot of knowledge, dedication, strong routines, strong leadership, flexibility, and quick thinking.
 
So the CAF requests items from front to back as opposed to BS date? That's dumb.
 
I also totally agree that only a Hi-Po should be a CTL. There is just so much to keep up with over there. CTL is not an easy job. My CTL makes it very obvious that you shouldn't place a brand new TL in the CTL role unless they are very high potential. Target also shouldn't place a brand new ETL as an ETL-HL at a newly remodeled PFresh store. There's a reason why there is (or used to be at least) a SrETL-Food in most SuperTs. It's an area that takes a lot of knowledge, dedication, strong routines, strong leadership, flexibility, and quick thinking.

I disagree about the ETL part....We have had 3 different and newly hired ETLs for HL in the span of about a year. The first one left and the other two are still there, they just switched around areas. My store is a lower volume so that could be why I think this way. For the most part the ETLS stay out of Markets business and only come to do the walks or any urgent news I may have missed or just any small thing that needs to be done for the day. Despite this, we were #1 in the group last year so I think it is more about your CTL and PAs than anything else
 
So the CAF requests items from front to back as opposed to BS date? That's dumb.

If this is true it is dumb. The solution, if you know you have multiples, is to just SUBT the older dated product and STO the newer product before going out to work the pull. Although this really is only easy with Produce and Meat.
 
Or backroom can be organized when they backstock and sto all like items together. This might require moving some other stuff around, but that is the most efficient way to do it. There shouldn't be three open cases of 80/20 ground meat on three different shelves with 3 in the 6/27 box, 12 in the 6/29 box and 8 in the 7/03 box. Had it all been backstocked together, the backroom tm would only be led to one location and could pull the oldest rate first and get rid of that box. The problem with sto-ing the same item in different spots is that the system goes to the spot that can fill the need first. It doesn't really go by shelf location order and definitely not by backstock date. In the above situation, if the system needed 5 eaches, it would go to the 6/29 or 7/03 box bypassing the 6/27 box. Only if it needed three or less would it hit the 6/27 box and that's only if it is backstocked in a location that is earlier than the others in the shelf location order.
 
What does C&S stand for? We just call it the FDC truck so I'm curious.

C+S is a third-party wholesale grocery supplier. They supply any perishables that are not supplied by vendors. C+S services stores that are not serviced by a FDC.
 
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