Company Blog

New Business

by Adam Zack — April 5, 2017

“My grocery store sucks!”

I was talking with DW the other day and he said “How are new business prospects looking? We are finishing up the major website work and the designers and programmers will be ready for new work.” I had to admit that there was nothing major in the pipeline and I would re-examine my contact list and push ahead with making new ones. The difficulty in attracting new business – any new business – is that the prospective customer has to have at least a little feeling that he has a need for change. And that is particularly difficult in the food business where change is resisted like trips to the dentist and purse strings are pulled so tight. So how do you attract new customers to your store? They need to have a need. (“I’m hungry” or “My grocery store sucks, I need to find a new place to shop.”) They need convenience, a sense of value, appreciation of their new patronage, quality that doesn’t disappoint. What makes it more difficult is that new customers don’t identify themselves usually —they come in unannounced and experience your store and if they have a bad experience then they just don’t come back. You never even knew they were there. It’s one of the reasons great operators use a first rate Mystery Shopping service like JM Ridgway so that their employees are on the ball all the time (OK, most of the time, realistically no one is on the ball 100% of the time.)

Next week – some ideas on how to identify and target those customers who have a need for a new store.

UPDATE: We are in the test stages of a new online ordering module that prints a customer’s order right to your deli, bakery or juice bar without having to use an outside service. We use your menu, let them place their order via their phone or computer and voila! It prints via a bluetooth receipt printer wherever you want it to in the store. It’s a labor and time saver and really is cutting edge. Bravo to our Whitney Ripley for developing it. Give us a call for more details. (And yes, it fits a need and yes, it’s incredibly affordable.)