Take no prisoners in the turkey wars

Store Equipment & Design, Nov, 2000 by David Litwak

I know no one will read this.

After all, it is November and you are all probably running around trying to figure out where to store all those 20-pound frozen bowling balls that once were turkeys. Or you're scurrying back and forth, making sure that the refrigeration equipment is running properly.

You Know it's turkey season when you consistently wake up in a pool of sweat following a nightmare about rising temperatures, only to find that the freezer case sensor alarm going off is merely your alarm clock.

Welcome to Thanksgiving, a feast marking the kickoff of the holiday season. It's a time of year when supermarket sales are highest, and so are the labor hours. I've always admired the general supermarket approach to Thanksgiving. It's a business model filled with virtue and pure simplicity. By Wednesday, Nov. 22, all those turkeysicles will be gone, your walk-ins empty again.

The part I love about this yearly merchandising ritual is that the vast majority of the birds will be given away free. Yes, free or deeply discounted-a holiday gift to club cardholders. Pure salesmanship-take your most in-demand product and give it away, or at least lose some money on it! Don't worry: we'll make it up on volume. How much volume money is generally associated with free? Wait, we'll use the birds to lure in the customers - well give them a turkey and then jack up the price ofyams3 cents a can. As the guy on TV says, "Do the math!" It takes a lot of yams to makeup for a 20-pound bird.

Anyway, what this altruistic promotion does, in addition to establishing the all-important goodwill with customers, is bring in more shoppers during what is already the busiest time of the year. More shoppers are definitely a "good thing," as Martha Stewart is quick to remind anybody unfortunate enough to be viewing.

Thanksgiving, as a result, will cause a strain on most of your operating systems. You'll need every labor hour you can possibly find. Refrigeration and freezer space will likely be overloaded, bakeries and kitchens will operate on triple production shifts, trucks will run in and out of loading docks, stockrooms will overflow and front ends will be in constant motion trying to move those 20shopper-deep checkout lines.

It won't be easy getting through the next two months. By now you've already gone through your holiday planning. If you haven't, then lock the doors, shut off the lights and hide. Because you're about to blow the biggest sales bonanza of the year--not to mention the opportunity to help families feed relatives they don't necessarily want to dine beside at any other time of the year!

Planning for the holidays is a little like what it took to plan for D-Day. It takes a coordinated effort between store operations, on-site store management, chain buyers, suppliers, shippers, warehouse operations, store maintenance and engineering, as well as about 20 other groups both inside and outside of the company.

Thanksgiving is not for the fainthearted. Retailers have no second chance. Free turkeys are only a benefit to the store if they are in stock whenever the shopper is ready to pick them up, whether that is Nov.10 or Nov. 23-and you better have the right size!

A free turkey will forgive you only so many out-of-stocks on cranberry sauce, or packaged stuffing, or salad, pumpkin pies or those incredibly profitable cans of yams. The warm glow given off by a free turkey tends to wear off after waiting in a checkout line for 45 minutes. Goodwill melts about as fast as the ice covering the turkey's outside wrapper.

The holiday season is a particularly important time of the year for store maintenance and engineering workers. The extra customers place a tremendous burden on the stores facilities and equipment. A store and especially its refrigeration equipment can get six months worth of wear and tear during the two-month holiday season. Monitoring of equipment during these two months is crucial to ensure that nothing goes wrong or breaks down. If something does break down, it is imperative it be fixed right away--there simply is no alternative cold storage space available at this time of year. The best way to get ready for the holiday season is to make sure every bit of equipment has received its proper preventative maintenance going into November

Have a great Thanksgiving! I'll be in at about 11:30 on the night of the 22nd to pick up my free bird. Try to have a 22-pounder put aside for me.

Of course, this is just my opinion. If I really knew, you couldn't afford me!