Seems pretty terrible at my store particularly in meat and to some extent produce. Our meat cooler is pretty bare. Was talking to my meat tl today and he said he received one case of chicken that was on ad starting today. He had to tell multiple guests that we are already out of an item within 6 hours of opening. It's not the first time it's happened either. Produce just seems to over order everything. Lots of things going out of date because there is just too much.
Archived How is the produce/meat/bakery auto ordering working for you guys?
- Thread starter BRTJ
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Welcome!
Mods, please move this thread to the market thread. More pfresh & super folks hang out there.
Mods, please move this thread to the market thread. More pfresh & super folks hang out there.
DoWork
Probably a Sociopath
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It's going fairly well at my store. Meat is hit and miss. It's important to 0 out your counts, because for some reason, it's showing incorrectly every week. This causes missed product, empty shelves. Bugh. There's a lot of flexing to make meat appear full.
In produce, it's been pretty successful. You really have to flex, though. Three facings of one of our best sellers, the leafy green romaine, and we get one case of six. Not cool. Carrots are a problem, too. We went a week without any one pound carrots. We just flexed with supremes as they're the same price. We have only received two cases of the snacking carrots in the last month. They sell very well. As far as out of date items go, my largest problem is the sliced apples, both the hard plastic containers and the plastic bags, the bagged cut veggies, particularly butternut squash and cauliflower, and lastly, the god damn cut peppers/onions/mirepoix/kabob kits. Guests laugh at the last four items, as they're way too expensive. I don't need but one case, not 3.
Bakery has been kind of bare. Not a lot of product, until we're close to the end of a season and get hammered with the holiday crap the DC doesn't want to deal with.
It could be better, but it's not terrible.
*Produce still has a 15 page order guide. I don't know if there are plans to fully automate everything. I hope not. The forecasts on many fruits is dead wrong and we won't have anything to sell.
In produce, it's been pretty successful. You really have to flex, though. Three facings of one of our best sellers, the leafy green romaine, and we get one case of six. Not cool. Carrots are a problem, too. We went a week without any one pound carrots. We just flexed with supremes as they're the same price. We have only received two cases of the snacking carrots in the last month. They sell very well. As far as out of date items go, my largest problem is the sliced apples, both the hard plastic containers and the plastic bags, the bagged cut veggies, particularly butternut squash and cauliflower, and lastly, the god damn cut peppers/onions/mirepoix/kabob kits. Guests laugh at the last four items, as they're way too expensive. I don't need but one case, not 3.
Bakery has been kind of bare. Not a lot of product, until we're close to the end of a season and get hammered with the holiday crap the DC doesn't want to deal with.
It could be better, but it's not terrible.
*Produce still has a 15 page order guide. I don't know if there are plans to fully automate everything. I hope not. The forecasts on many fruits is dead wrong and we won't have anything to sell.
whippingboy
Produce Peon
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Our meat department is just sad. They never have enough ground beef and always have a ton of organic/free range product that never sells. They've mysupported the heck out of it to no avail. They are constantly having to flex product to fill holes.
We, too, are experiencing a problem with carrots. I've been told that we can mysupport it to fix the counts but haven't had time to look into it. The trick I've found to produce auto-ordering is that backstock NEEDS to be done daily. If it isn't, product needs to be repushed daily and HQ has no clue what to order. If we leave backstock alone and it piles up, they tend to send more of the same bs and we end up drowning in naked juices and chia drinks (now there's a visual).
As for sliced apples, deli uses them for their production, so HQ never sends enough.
I was told all salads would be auto ordered but so far it has only been leafy and light caesar - why they don't do it all or none of it baffles me.
We've gone down from 47 pages to 19 on the order guide, but I can't say it's saved us any time - time spent on accurate orders has now been replaced by backstocking and scanning outs.
Our bakery and deli teams have not done any backstocking since the rollout, so I'm not sure how they've been doing.
We, too, are experiencing a problem with carrots. I've been told that we can mysupport it to fix the counts but haven't had time to look into it. The trick I've found to produce auto-ordering is that backstock NEEDS to be done daily. If it isn't, product needs to be repushed daily and HQ has no clue what to order. If we leave backstock alone and it piles up, they tend to send more of the same bs and we end up drowning in naked juices and chia drinks (now there's a visual).
As for sliced apples, deli uses them for their production, so HQ never sends enough.
I was told all salads would be auto ordered but so far it has only been leafy and light caesar - why they don't do it all or none of it baffles me.
We've gone down from 47 pages to 19 on the order guide, but I can't say it's saved us any time - time spent on accurate orders has now been replaced by backstocking and scanning outs.
Our bakery and deli teams have not done any backstocking since the rollout, so I'm not sure how they've been doing.
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@whippingboy I'm confused about your comment that not back stocking causes HQ to send too much product. Your on hands are the same irregardless if anything is backstocked so how would this affect the auto ordering? Also if your counts are off on carrots you can fix that at the store with research, though it can be a pain due to filters.
whippingboy
Produce Peon
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I've researched it to no avail, as has the meat dept. I was told that HQ orders based on what we have on backstock, not OH. Either way, the system is broken and it takes ongoing manpower to fix it.
I've had success researching many other items, but no luck with carrots. Perhaps Target is dangling too many of the damned things to keep up.
I've had success researching many other items, but no luck with carrots. Perhaps Target is dangling too many of the damned things to keep up.
DoWork
Probably a Sociopath
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Sliced apples are a pain. We get one case, deli uses them the same day. No point in even carrying them. I say we just toss'em in the deli cooler.
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It took awhile for the system to get the hang of how many to send to our store. Send plenty of mysupports and take pictures of empty shelving...after about 6 months our orders got consistently good.
qmosqueen
Perishable Assistant Wizard
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I locu every shelf of fresh meat every day and organize and sto back on the shelves. This may help or not. But at least your back room counts will be accurate. Maybe you have ghosts hanging out on empty shelves we had to my support our meat several times now the meat is about 3/4 of a pallet we hardly ever run out. This has been good for about 3 months now.
LogisticsFox
Perishables Prince
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I think we commonly run out of ground beef but reliably have everything else. One of our meat TMs refuses to use a PDA to pull anything so I'm surprised the entire wall hasn't gone to shit.
Produce is usually pretty full with the exception of some Bolthouse drinks that are really good sellers.
I couldn't tell you how bakery is doing since they haven't backstocked anything since November but their tables always look full.
Produce is usually pretty full with the exception of some Bolthouse drinks that are really good sellers.
I couldn't tell you how bakery is doing since they haven't backstocked anything since November but their tables always look full.
In my store the meat department(my department) for the past week or so has been low on product. We never zeroed out the missing products in hopes more is sent it that's never the case. Last week we ran out of ground beef and all the chicken. And I even made sure to order more then enough but not a lot is being sent. And when it is sent it flies out of the shelves so by noon ish we are out of the products that came in that morning......
signingminion
WAVing in the air like I just don't care
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This sounds like a super target thing...pfresh already has bakery, most meat and half of produce auto ordered for us.
This samething is happening to my meat department. A lot of chicken comes in every morning but is gone by 1 we just never get enough to keep it all full. And I have to double order to make sure that if we run out I can flex over with sone other stuff. Overall kinda sad that we are getting nothing to stock our shelves and it's been happening for a few weeks
TargetRed
PFresh Assistant
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The bakery at my store is lackluster at best. I love to have it full but it rarely works out, even after I zero out the counts. The three things we sell the most of -- short French bread, long French bread and Apple Fritters -- rarely come in it seems like and when they do, they fly off the shelves. It's frustrating. Most of the time, we are probably running at 60-65% capacity over there which I hate so much. And I don't know what to do because I zero out the counts and all that other stuff, but it doesn't seem to work.
The meat department isn't that bad. Most of the time, we're at 80-85% or so capacity, which is alright. However, I just did a revision over there on Saturday and there are a ton of outs because we hadn't gotten it in yet (why are we selling 73/27 ground beef?).
The produce, my favorite part, is hit-or-miss. The other PA doesn't order enough so we run out of key things a lot of times. And for whatever reason, the DC hasn't been shipping us 1-lb. strawberries or Cuties (3 lb or 5 lb). And those are two of our top sellers so our sales have been looking mediocre compared to what they usually are. If I ordered more, we would never run out of anything that we have control over but that's not the case. It is what it is unfortunately.
The meat department isn't that bad. Most of the time, we're at 80-85% or so capacity, which is alright. However, I just did a revision over there on Saturday and there are a ton of outs because we hadn't gotten it in yet (why are we selling 73/27 ground beef?).
The produce, my favorite part, is hit-or-miss. The other PA doesn't order enough so we run out of key things a lot of times. And for whatever reason, the DC hasn't been shipping us 1-lb. strawberries or Cuties (3 lb or 5 lb). And those are two of our top sellers so our sales have been looking mediocre compared to what they usually are. If I ordered more, we would never run out of anything that we have control over but that's not the case. It is what it is unfortunately.
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