What can be expected from Grocery Pickup?
JiJi
if it fits, it ships
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You can expect as many grocery orders as you get normal OPU once people realize they can order them. You're gonna want someone in it at all times once it picks up. Unfortunately, it has the old OPU batch size, so you may have to prioritize it at times to keep on top of it. You're gonna wanna be quick as well, once you pick a cold item you have 30 minutes counting down to get it bagged and into the OPU cooler. Frozen items are 15 minutes (food safety reasons). If you have problems with CNS pallets, have your TL team up with the grocery lead to come up with a way to tackle it. Fresh OPU has been an absolute mess at my store because we have weeks of CNS to push, and no one to push it.
Keep expiration dates in mind, and the freshness of the produce you're grabbing. You may have to INF an item if it expires too soon and you can't find any others.
Also, don't forget to bag your meats
Keep expiration dates in mind, and the freshness of the produce you're grabbing. You may have to INF an item if it expires too soon and you can't find any others.
Also, don't forget to bag your meats
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2018
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At first, not much. Eventually, though it will change your entire business model. My store started it in March. Throughout most of the summer it was mostly just a nuisance with a few orders dropping in here and there that someone had to get to eventually. Now, we're going crazy with groceries. Last January, 20% of total OPU units were F&B. This year we're nearing 50% F&B, with about 70-80% of those coming in grocery batches. As the OPU opener I now spend the first hour or two of my day doing nothing but clearing out the overnight grocery orders. Every single day.
Other things to expect:
--TMs will cut corners with food safety. Watch for it. Make sure someone is staying on top of it.
--Get used to INFing bread.
--There is a list of 100 items that people can order no matter what your counts are. However, if you INF an item on the list, no one else can order it for the rest of the day. This is why you want to clear out grocery orders first thing in the morning. Take the INFs if they are there, before people start ordering and the queue fills up with more of the item.
--If your maket team is good, you're going to love groceries eventually. Mine is great. Grocery INFs are about 2%. The rest of the store is the normal January mess, but we're green overall thanks to our market team. That makes me love groceries.
Other things to expect:
--TMs will cut corners with food safety. Watch for it. Make sure someone is staying on top of it.
--Get used to INFing bread.
--There is a list of 100 items that people can order no matter what your counts are. However, if you INF an item on the list, no one else can order it for the rest of the day. This is why you want to clear out grocery orders first thing in the morning. Take the INFs if they are there, before people start ordering and the queue fills up with more of the item.
--If your maket team is good, you're going to love groceries eventually. Mine is great. Grocery INFs are about 2%. The rest of the store is the normal January mess, but we're green overall thanks to our market team. That makes me love groceries.
JiJi
if it fits, it ships
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- Jul 21, 2020
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Vendor items are the bane of my existence in OPU.
CLEAN YOUR COOLERS REGULARLY. Go through it every couple weeks to toss out old orders, and actually wipe down the cooler shelves. It gets stinky, sticky, gross, and nasty real quick because of milk, and if you're not on top of it, it'll get really gross. Ours was so bad at one point I almost vomited opening the door to grab RTS one morning because someone had left a bag in there where the milk exploded.
Also, you might get snagged by ecolab if it's really bad.
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That's just asking for lawsuit right there.
We got snagged by ecolab. Moldy strawberries is very bad. Audit the orders in the cooler, freezers, and dry locations weekly and make sure you always get them 4-5 days before a food holiday.
Make sure the DU team isn't pulling cooler and freezer more then 5 minutes prior to guest arrival. They also need to know that the time is ticking down. If it is 5 minutes for 10 minutes, that is not cool. They know about the 30 minutes, but each team doesn't get their own 30 minutes. Do not let them pull any freezer and cooler ahead of guest arrival if the guest doesn't have an arrival time
Make sure the shelves are spaced an equal distance apart. You want milk to stand up in each bin, on each shelf. DO NOT LAY MILK ON ITS SIDE!!!!
If you will be using the coolers and freezers in the back, schedule a person to run between market and GS. Sometimes we had someone just waiting in market for an order to pop up with cold stuff. They were supposed to be zoning and doing market reshop.
Make sure there is always paper towels and spill pads at guest service because every liquid you can imagine with be on the floor.
yeah i audit 2-3x a day to make sure our idiotic fulfillment team isn't constantly fucking shit up since the fulfillment tl seems to be totally uninterested in holding his team accountable
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Make everyone take the food safety training that cashiers have to do!!!!!
I am tired of having meat bagged with produce. Produce bagged with dry goods. Dry goods bagged with chemicals. Milk on its side. Eggs stuffed in a bag with large heavy items. Eggs put upside down.
BE AWARE and ask yourself how would I want to receive my groceries If I was picking up a DU order?
I am tired of having meat bagged with produce. Produce bagged with dry goods. Dry goods bagged with chemicals. Milk on its side. Eggs stuffed in a bag with large heavy items. Eggs put upside down.
BE AWARE and ask yourself how would I want to receive my groceries If I was picking up a DU order?
Yeah think it’s your grocery 😀😀
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- Jun 30, 2020
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Add eggs to that list. We actually have several signs on the freezers that read, "Eggs and Milk do not belong in the Freezers!!!".
It says something about my store (nothing good) that we even had to do this.
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- Sep 25, 2019
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For some strange reason I can not accept the idea of someone picking my groceries. Unless I was completely infirm, immobile and not able to get out, I will get my own stuff, thank you. I never park near the door of any store, I park way far away and walk the distance to the store. Good exercise and you protect your car from assholes slamming it with carts and doors. I do walk past the parking places allocated for pick up and 9/10 times it's a Karen in the expensive SUV, pushing a button to automatically open the hatch door. They are perfectly capable of shopping, they're just pathetically lazy and entitled. I won't comment on the folks picking, never witnessed it or them so it's unfair to judge.
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We had a sign "no expired food, no QMOS in Baler."
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TL
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- Apr 27, 2020
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My store is also starting Grocery Pickup on Tuesday. Our store is being given 40 hours of payroll for training. The first few months of it will involve guest service advocates going to the freezers and refrigerators across the store until we eventually get them up front.
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^This. Everyone picking grocery batches needs training. At one of the stores in my area, they have a posted list of people who have been trained for grocery and have demonstrated to the TLs (both Fulfillment and Market) that they understand food safety rules and know how to bag and store orders according to those rules. I think that is a great idea. We are trying to implement this at my store because what happens when you throw bodies with no training at Grocery OPU is just bad. We've been filling grocery orders since mid-summer and as @seasonaldude says, it was just a few orders at first, totally manageable, mostly dry goods with milk or cheese, only a few people needed to be trained to handle it, etc. All good.
Until it wasn't.
Here in SoCal, Target is the only place where you can order groceries and then pick them up on your schedule. Every other grocery store doing order pick-up, even Walmart, requires an appointment for you to come get your groceries. Target is unique in that they don't require an appointment - you get the notification that your order is ready and you can come right over. Add to that the virus surge that started in the fall and then the holidays that started in October and our grocery orders just exploded. When the 4am team comes in, we dedicate two people just to the grocery orders that have piled up overnight (apparently, grocery shopping online in the middle of the night is a thing for a lot of people, who knew 🙄 ) because around 6:30 or 7am orders start dropping for the day and we need to start jumping on those. We kind of expected a slow down in grocery orders now that the holidays are over. Nope. I get the feeling our customers really go for this service and they've discovered a lot of products at Target that they really like. i.e. Good & Gather, all the organic products, the meatless lines (Impossible Burger, Beyond Meat, etc.) as well as the 87 different kinds of Milk (regular, organic, oat, almond, soy, etc.) that we carry.
Good luck with your grocery implementation - you're going to need it.
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^^ also...we at GS may gripe about the 2 minute thing but it is what sets Target apart from the grocery store pickups. It's fast and easy. Our grocery DUs have exploded too and it's not gonna slow down. Once people key in to the convenience factor...oh, I can get a full cart of grocery items PLUS a sweater and socks PLUS a dongle for my iPhone PLUS some sheets PLUS diapers and wipes?
Also...the app makes it incredibly easy. I don't know about your stores but our DUs explode on Mondays because I think bored, tired moms sit at home over the weekend, scroll through and shop, click send and voila. I see the same guests day in and day out and not with small orders either. It's like they aren't spending real money because it's on the app. And of course, that's exactly what Target intended.
Also...the app makes it incredibly easy. I don't know about your stores but our DUs explode on Mondays because I think bored, tired moms sit at home over the weekend, scroll through and shop, click send and voila. I see the same guests day in and day out and not with small orders either. It's like they aren't spending real money because it's on the app. And of course, that's exactly what Target intended.
Stuff you see when children who have never actually done a grocery shop get assigned to do grocery. The best one was yesterday I got to watch a style TM pick a grocery OPU and it had both milk that expired that day and she put raw chicken in same bag as produce of course neither bagged to separate them. Or the dry part of another order left on the floor since she scanned everything dry then figured out the Waco wouldn't hold it all..
god I hate these idiots. And they are reason #1 I refuse to order any grocery for pick up from my own damn store!
IWishIKnew
This was supposed to be a seasonal job...
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It would be super helpful if they would spend a few minutes to do actual "here's how to bag groceries properly" training when training people as cashiers, rather than just the food safety training which doesn't really tell you how to bag groceries properly. Since flex doesn't get cashier trained, that would be a separate thing, but it wouldn't take very long and would be helpful for anyone called for backup as well as OPU.
The "trainer" at my store is really moody and when he is grumpy, he will put bleach with potatoes.
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- Jan 8, 2021
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Ha, those months before you get the coolers are tough! For us, it started out with the occasional grocery order until guests became aware after about a month. Then it picked up enough that our "runner" was almost literally running back there to keep up, and we got the front of store fridges just in time. It's an experience that I'm glad has come and gone.
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- Oct 7, 2012
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Quick question. Someone mentioned that produce should not be bagged with dry groceries. Why? If I have an order that is a bag of apples, what is the reason I can not place a bag of chips in the same bag, or a can of soup? The other examples I completely agree with but this one is confusing me. Thanks for your help.
