Lessons From The Road.

After visiting over 150 grocery headquarters, talking to over 1200 independent grocers, and traveling over 75,000 miles. You learn a lot.

Here is what we've learned and the solutions we have developed to address the needs of the independent grocer.

Overhead keeps going up.

Utopia Self-checkout will lower your overhead and has the lowest attendant intervention rate in the industry. This combined with the simplest and easiest customer interface, ensures higher customer satisfaction and increased customer loyalty.

Profits are being reduced.

Bank note recycling will improve your bottom line. The Utopia Innovation lane and the Utopia Cash Handling Lane each come equipped with the MEI Bank Note Recycler. The Bank Note Recycler greatly reduces float by up to 90% and requires less tills to be pre-made and counted.

Shrink is going up, sweethearting and employee theft on the rise.

Utopia Cash Handling Lane will reduce sweethearting and employee theft. It will also detect counterfeit bills. Plus the accuracy of automated equipment eliminates the need for cashiers, cash room personnel and managers to reconcile tills repeatedly due to cash counting errors and employee theft. The Cash Handling Lane also drastically reduces the amount of time required to reconcile tills before and after each cashier shift, providing substantial labor and time savings.

Counterfeit bill use is increasing.

Mei's Bank Note Recycler will detect and reject counterfeit bills.

Customer loyalty declining.

If you don't offer self-checkout over 20% of customers won't shop your store. If you are not currently offering self-checkout, you're already losing up to 20% of your potential customers. The old days of thinking that self-service would lessen your interaction with customers and reduce customer service are over.

Prepared meals to go, is growing.

In store sampling with the Pan-Oston Mobile Demonstration Unit increase sales by over 60%. Recent research and what we've seen on the road, shows that with the customer interaction of in-store demonstrations you not only increase sales, but that you increase customer loyalty too.

Need more room for merchandising.

We offer a wide selection of reduced footprint merchandising solutions throughout the store. From our bakery displays to our self-checkout units we are always developing ways to increase product while reducing the footprint of our merchandisers.

Need self-checkout and new merchandisers but I can't afford them or lending is too tight.

With your N.G.A. discounts and with leasing options available to you it's never been easier to afford new merchandisers and lanes. Plus with our direct from the manufacturer pricing you can now offer your customers the option of self-checkout for 1/3 less than comparable solutions. In fact we've been asked over and over how can we make our Utopia self-checkout solutions so affordable and the answer is that we are the only ones that aren't trying to lock you into a long term service contract, and the only ones to not go through a middle man to serve the independent grocer. When you cut out the middle man and make your solution POS neutral, you save a fortune! Plus with our leasing options there is no reason you cant afford self-checkout.

To schedule a stop by the Utopia Across America Tour at your grocery headquarters or to find out even more about Pan-Oston and all of our solutions visit us on the web at panoston.com or call us at 800-210-2302.