Undoubtedly, fresh food management is an indispensable part of the functional configuration of supermarkets. Some scholars even suggest that "freshness" is the soul that drives the whole store, the lifeblood of supermarket operation, an important source of attracting customers and an important factor to attract tourists to the store. The success or failure of community-based supermarkets depends entirely on the sales and management of fresh goods. At the same time, vegetables and fruits are an extremely important department in the whole fresh food department. Vegetables, fruits and whole grains are all foods that people must eat every day. Therefore, the quality and price of vegetables and fruits have become the most sensitive thermometers for the quality, price and image of fresh products. There is a famous saying in the business world: fruits and vegetables drive meat and seafood; Meat and seafood drive bread and cooked food. It can be seen that the management of fruits and vegetables plays a leading role in the whole preservation operation.
The fresh food department is the most distinctive department in the supermarket, and its operating characteristics are also the most difficult, extensive and professional, and the most difficult thing in fresh food management is probably vegetables. Because of the physical and chemical properties of vegetables, they are afraid of bumping, easy to lose water, and poor preservation can easily affect the effect of selling and eating fresh, and even rot and deteriorate. In addition, the storage, transportation and processing conditions of vegetables at this stage are backward and the circulation mode is not matched, so the management of vegetables in supermarkets is very difficult now.
To analyze problems and dilemmas, we must first determine the main competitors, establish a reference system, and find out the inevitable loss factors and avoidable human factors. From the perspective of vegetable management, the most direct and fundamental competitors of supermarket vegetable management are farmers' markets, morning markets and street vendors. Fruit and vegetable products are different from other durable consumer goods such as clothing and home appliances. Customers will visit several supermarkets and shop around. Each fresh supermarket has its own service radius. For the convenience of purchase, customers usually buy nearby. Therefore, due to the influence of service radius, peers are not the main competitors, and other supermarkets are not too competitive.
It can be said that compared with the main competitors, the main problems and dilemmas faced by supermarket vegetable management are: poor freshness control and excessive material damage. "Fresh" is the life and value of fresh vegetables. When consumers buy vegetables, the quality judgment mainly stays in sensory judgment such as shape, color and freshness. In the case of the same purchase cost, freshness can finally affect the selling price. However, due to the high water content and short shelf life of vegetables, they are afraid of bumping, difficult to store and easy to rot and deteriorate. Therefore, there will be different degrees of water loss and goods loss in the sales process, which are inevitable losses caused by the physical and chemical properties of products. However, due to the difference of management level and circulation and sales methods, the losses caused by human factors are very different. These factors are the key points that need to be controlled to improve the operating conditions, and the causes and gaps of these problems need to be carefully analyzed. According to the author's experience, it can be summarized as follows:
1, management reason. Due to the physical and chemical characteristics of low productization, fear of bumping, perishable and difficult to keep fresh, high requirements are put forward for managers in all aspects of distribution, placement, sales and index accounting. Different management methods and different management processes will have great differences in vegetable preservation and material consumption control. The emphasis is on responsibility management. It is impossible to ask people in all aspects of vegetable management to be as responsible as small traders. The key is how to use index accounting, material rewards and punishments, and standardized processes to improve the sense of responsibility and enthusiasm of all parties as much as possible.
2. Sales method. Sales methods involve facilities, lighting, placement and preservation of vegetable commodities, as well as supplier cooperation methods, pricing principles, discounts and so on.
3. procurement. The way and quality of commodity procurement will directly affect sales. At present, the vast majority of vegetables in supermarkets are purchased from wholesale markets, whether they are picked by supermarkets or supplied by suppliers. Different from industrial products, the classification quality standards of vegetable commodities are very vague and difficult to define, and it is impossible to unify the size and specifications of vegetables during their growth. Therefore, it is particularly important to calculate the cost performance ratio for the quality of each link of procurement and sales.
The above points are often the most important factors for supermarket vegetable managers, but the author believes that they are not the main reasons for the above problems, nor are they the most effective ways to fundamentally solve the problems of freshness and material loss. Because purely from the perspective of competitors, no matter how good the supermarket management is, it is impossible to surpass the small vendors in the above aspects. In order to fundamentally solve the problem of freshness and material damage, it is necessary to seriously deal with it from the following aspects:
4. Secondary packaging and distribution. In order to facilitate management and reduce costs, large supermarket chains have generally established their own fresh food distribution centers. The main functions of fresh food distribution center are (for vegetables): unified procurement, relying on large-scale procurement to reduce procurement costs and plug procurement loopholes; Preliminary classification and processing of purchased vegetables; Temporary preservation and storage of vegetables; According to the needs of each store, distribute vegetables to each store. It can be said that the establishment of fresh food distribution center is very necessary, and its role is also very significant. However, in the process of sub-packaging and secondary distribution, there is inevitably a problem of material damage, which has not attracted enough attention from managers. In the process of secondary packaging, vegetables need to be processed once to remove defective fruits and rotten leaves, but I think it is unnecessary to subcontract and wrap most vegetables with plastic wrap.
The main purpose of wrapping plastic wrap is to keep vegetables fresh and prevent customers from picking them at will. In fact, vegetables themselves are fresh products. Keeping fresh with plastic wrap is not a good idea. It is better to humidify. The best way to keep fresh is to sell vegetables in time. Although there is no plastic wrap, it is obvious proof that the food of small vendors is fresher than that of supermarkets. In addition, when buying products, consumers have a desire to choose actively. If you tie all the products to him and let him consume passively, he will be very unhappy if he lacks a sense of picking and choosing. Anyone who has had experience in supermarket promotion knows that it is very violent to pick and sell promotional goods at will. Price is on the one hand, and the psychological factor of picking and selling at will is also a reason. In the final analysis, the main reason for adopting this packaging method is that we have no confidence in the quality and management level of our products. If the products are standardized, they all look fresh and the salespeople have a stronger sense of responsibility. Like small vendors, are we still afraid of customers picking?
At the same time, secondary packaging is very harmful to vegetables. As we all know, vegetables are very afraid of rubbing. Friction and collision of some whiskers are inevitable during transportation, but in the process of secondary packaging, secondary wear or even greater wear will occur. Take cucumber as an example. It is inevitable that there will be a slight indentation on the contact surface between melons during the first transportation. When packaging for the second time, the contact surface between melons will inevitably change, and secondary indentation will inevitably occur. To make matters worse, when repackaging and distribution, the packaging will not be tight, but it will be fluffy. The biggest fear of transporting vegetables is that the packaging is not tight, and the bumps during transportation will bring fatal wear and tear to vegetables. You can observe the vegetables of vendors in the farmers' market. Vegetables that are afraid of wear are usually in the original box, protecting vegetables like babies. This is also a very important aspect for cucumber to keep its "top flower with thorns".
On the other hand, the secondary packaging of plastic wrap will inevitably increase the cost. From this point of view, secondary packaging is not worth the loss.
5. Pay attention to the construction of facilities and ignore the close contact and cooperation with the upstream vegetable supply. The vegetable management of chain supermarkets generally pays more attention to the customer-oriented vegetable management form, including variety items, store layout, equipment configuration and so on. In the process design of vegetable management, more attention will be paid to the vegetable processing and management process itself, while the influence on the upstream procurement, supply and logistics of vegetable supply will be ignored. In fact, external factors such as vegetable circulation channels, procurement and distribution status have great influence on supermarket vegetable management.
For fresh products, the higher the degree of productization, the less difficult it is to manage, such as pasta and frozen meat. If the vegetable products have been standardized and productized to the maximum extent before entering the circulation and sales, the supermarket vegetable operators will be greatly reduced by the problems of vegetable product processing accounting and loss control. This requires the current supermarket managers to attach importance to and strengthen cooperation with upstream vegetable suppliers, learn from the ideas of supply chain management and "zero inventory", move the degree of vegetable productization forward as far as possible, develop in the direction of base procurement and processing, and truly form a strategic partnership with suppliers, rather than a simple price reduction policy. The difference between traditional purchasing operation and modern purchasing strategy can be summarized as focusing on the lowest total cost of ownership rather than purchasing price. Although the purchase price of fresh goods is still significant, it is only a small part of the total cost formula of vegetables. In addition, enterprises should also consider the service cost and product life cycle cost of secondary distribution and cost accounting of vegetables. Product life cycle cost is more important to fresh goods. For example, if you purchase goods from the wholesale market at the same starting line as your competitors, if you can purchase goods directly from the vegetable planting base, you can save 1-2 days, which is very important for the preservation of vegetables, so it has greater advantages than your competitors.
6, the price is too high, relying on high prices to make up for the shortcomings of management and supply chain, sacrificing a large number of customer groups. The overall image of the supermarket is bright, clean and hygienic, which is incomparable to the traditional farmers' market. This was originally a big advantage of supermarket management, but almost all supermarkets did not make good use of this advantage and basically entered a "strange circle" in their operation. Due to the influence of the allocation cost and management cost of the facilities, it can be said that the average selling cost of vegetables in supermarkets is very high before the customers are won from the farmers' market and the sales volume does not go up. Therefore, the price positioning of most supermarkets is high-end: the environment of supermarkets is good and clean, so the price of vegetables should be higher, and the money earned is the money of rich people. As we all know, this will drive away most customers, resulting in an insignificant increase in sales at one stage, and the sales volume will not go up. The vegetables will not be sold in time, and the less fresh they are, the fewer people will buy them. At the same time, the sales volume is small, and the average sales cost is bound to remain high. It is necessary to maintain the cost with high vegetable prices, and it is even more forced to go high-end, resulting in pollution-free and green organic vegetables at high prices. I wonder: Is the production and planting cost of pollution-free green organic vegetables really that high? In this way, it will inevitably lead to a vicious circle and turn good commercial projects into "chicken ribs". In fact, everyone should know that as long as the cost of circulation and distribution is reduced, the necessary management level is improved, the loss of materials is reduced, and the sales volume is increased, even if it is the same as the price of the farmer's market, the profit rate of vegetable operation is very objective. At the same time, if there is a significant increase in the sales of vegetables, it will play a very good role in promoting the sales of other fresh products and enhance the comprehensive operating efficiency of supermarkets.