Hi all,
I have worked in one of the two big chains (not saying which but its either Coles or Woolworths) for over 8 years now. I've worked in grocery/long life, dairy/freezer, customer service, meat and in fresh produce, so there's not much about the "behind the scenes" in supermarkets I don't know about :P
I'm currently studying at uni so I work part time atm.
AMA!
Well overall what I say will almost certainly apply to our competitor too. Many of my coworkers/managers/supervisors have worked for the opposition before, and from what I've heard they're pretty similar to us. Though I'd say on a store level, both our companies are run very differently to Aldi.
If it helps, I find our stores to look fresher and cleaner than most of the stores (even "upgraded" ones) of our competitor.
Doesn't count
are you a fresh food person?
I don't mind fresh food..
Explanation?
Coles then.
The box crusher blew my mind the first time i saw it.
Have you been to any online fulfillment centers? I gather they're moving away from "staff do shopping for you" to dedicated warehouses… wondering how sophisticated they are
I hate our box crusher. Most other stores have a shute where you throw the cardboard in and it gets crushed and a truck takes it away.. ours has to be manually cycled and tied up. It's time consuming.
Online orders and click n collect are usually done in-store. I haven't heard anything about moving that to a warehouse, that sounds less efficient imho.
Lols, that was my job at BigW back in the eighties. Nice to see they've progressed, I figured there would be an app for that now?
I work for BigW and my store in particular is still stuck in the 80s 😂 I the carpet, floors and shelves are from the original fit out looks disgusting
what's your staff discount?
5%, sometimes it's been 10% at christmas/new years/easter, which is nice.
down down prices are down.
Are you the down down gang(DDG) or the fresh food peeps(FFP)?
IMHO the quality of any supermarket comes down to the individual management and less to do with the chain. I've seen the same store do extremely well and then be run down in a matter of a couple of years.
hahaah that down down jingle is really annoying, though the time they heavily advertised one direction and played their songs continually for 3 months straight probably takes the cake.
But yeah I find store standards can even change on a weekly basis, if you have a lot of sickies and no one available to cover those hours, then waiting times at the checkouts can balloon out and out of stocks can soar..
How would you know they played the song for 3 months straight? Unless you're a Coles employee.
/casesolved
Haha one of my friends works for Coles.
Miriam here!
I see that at work also. They rely to heavily on individual staff and not to mention understaffing to save wages, especially come eofy.
All comes down to if there making there sales target if not pretty much they start cutting on staff witch then they have to start to cut corners to get the job done.
Whats the craziest bust/theft/scandal you've seen or dealt with in a work day?
Theft is a daily/hourly occurrence. People used to copy the markdown stickers, print them out at home and try and stick them on random items (eg. cosmetics/meat), one that sticks in my mind was a lady who had $200 worth it items she was about to pay $10 for. I find it funny when people think they're being clever by pulling the sale sticker off other marked down items but forgetting to grab the barcode. We've also had people walk straight out with loaded trolleys before too.
I was filling a while ago and one of the local druggies was standing at my cage stashing all this random stuff into his bag so I grabbed my manager. They nabbed him before he left the store.
i worked at a servo owned by one of the big two. i had a group of punk kids, we called them 'D12', come and steal meat pies and sausage rolls, go into the bathroom, and stick them down their pants. one kid, the eminem looking one, clearly burned himself. I would always call them out in front of other customers, but they knew they would get away with it easily.
True crime
The ad about the choosy online order chooser choosing the best produce is bunkum, yeah. What are their instructions?
"If you wouldn't buy it, the customer shouldn't have to buy it either."
Red or Green?
I prefer red capsicum but I like my apples green. Red apples always taste mushy to me.
Try a red Apple from the country / side of the road vendor when in season.
Crispy and beautiful - a WORLD of difference, nothing like the 6-12 month old frozen stock (or whatever they do to the supermarket ones).
Pink Lady are okay.
They shouldn't be covering up/putting away fruit before the shop closes, but we do cover it up at night. I think it's to keep them fresh.
Self-checkouts crash ALL the time, it's really embarrassing.
It's also partly due to the lights used in store. They brown certain veggies quicker and as a result create an image of older stock.
especially taters rot or turn poisonous!
osmosis
Potato,s are covered as they go green by the light.
Thought it's only sunlight that does that.
Why are all my favourite quality products slowly being replaced with 'home branded' crap?
That isn't up to us, that's done by people in head office. There's some good stuff we no longer sell and the store home brand isn't as good sadly.
It's because of margin on own brands sometimes being better than branded products which is achieved at a lower sell price which a majority of customers start to buy. It then doesn't make sense to stock equivalent branded products and maintain vendor relationships etc which leads to the line being deleted.
It's "essential" brands now or "private labels" RIP homebrand
Do you believe self-checkouts are a good thing?
Depends. I don't think they're costing many jobs at all (.. We still need people to monitor self serve!) and they're good for people who like their bags packed in a particular way or need to fuss around with multiple payments etc.
I really do not agree. I see at my local supermarkets they keep increasing the number of self check outs, some have 10 stations, and of course decreasing the cashiers. If all those people had to go though the traditional check out people would have to be employed to operate them. I think it mostly affects women who want to work part time and students like yourself. I never use self checkouts to save their jobs.
that makes 2 of us not using the self checkouts :)
True.
I find most of the public are too dumb to use them and require assistance anyway.
Aldi doesn't have serve checkouts, so you don't get silly long queues to be served by a human!
@This Guy: Aldi always have silly long queues to be served by a human, which is exacty why I like going to Coles/Woolies and using the quick self checkouts…
If you're worried about jobs, it really makes very little sense to be using the supermarket at all. Use the small independent stores.
Smaller lines than my local Coles/Woolies self serve at my local Aldi. My local opens a register if the queue is bigger than the convener belt. I imagine it's different in your suburb.
My local small, independent stores tend to pay their employees cash in hand. You can't buy a house if you're paid cash in hand.
@This Guy: tbh unless you're working lots of penalty rates or have a second full time job and work here on the side, no entry level supermarket worker can afford a house either 😂
@Levathian: I am not sure, I bought my first house while working 30 hours a week as a supermarket casual. Depends on what you do with your money I suppose.
Probably not in a capital city, but in many regional areas with a partner it is possible. It has become far harder over the last decade.
Knew someone who worked serice when the self serve were installed. Smallish store 6 new self serve. First week 10 staffing hours (for each week) were lost.
Very true about multiple payment methods, often go through self serve when I need to pay with gift cards because I don't want to hold things up.
Especially when I have 3-4 egift cards with $2.30 on them..
They should give you a 5% discount for using self checkout. It’s the staff discount that you get for working there
What's being done about the theft from self checkout?
I'm sure every customer is paying for theft out of every product that the supermarkets sell.
It's both expensed (as a loss in financial reports) and incorporated in pricing (higher margins to account for loss).
Margins are set for a store budget. Shrinkage is part of that budget.
Also, if the theft losses outweighed the savings made from having self checkouts they’d be removed in an instant.
@973728: as a Pricing Analyst, I know your higher margin comment is not accurate when it comes to theft / stock losses, might just be my particular department. I guess fresh produce etc might have the above applied.
Expensed through the P&L is correct, that's what I said, as part of doing business (to keep it simple).
My experience is different.
I have no idea how your side works. Most retail stores have targets/budgets based on complex stuff above my pay grade. My experience is that shrinkage comes off that target for bonuses. If you're chain is not costing shrinkage directly against each store how do you combat it?
Most of that I'm not allowed to disclose but the 'rules' are a lot more 'strict' these days (eg. Weights turned back on, item limits in self serve etc.)
Who's gonna know
Colesbusters!
How many kilos of brown onions can I buy in self serve?
Mix it up with carrots to slip under radar.
I know rules are strict in Coles but not in Woolies for sure.
What are the markup ranges of shelf products?
I can't see that data on the maxx, I'd love to know too!
Has to be Coles… its an RF unit at Woolies
RF unit at Target too. So it could also be Coles.
I'm not too clued up on the official names of things. It's just a scanner thing.
@Levathian:
Didn't Woolies used to work on Ave profit like 10 percent. With increased competition isn't it like 5 or 6
There is a way to find it on the coles Maxx but it's pretty had to find because it's not in the standard scanner app for checking counts.
Unfortunately items get loads attached. You normally need to be store manager or above to be able to see prices before loads. Delivery costs to the store are a load. An administration charge could be another load.
It is a way to reduce discounting and reduce bonuses payable as well as make the company look altruistic to junior employees (Oh, my company is the best, they lose money on milk and only make 3c per loaf on cheap bread).
Purchase price needs to be below ~20-30% of the final price for most fast-moving consumer goods retailers to turn a profit. There are 'loss leaders'. Major retail should not be loosing money on 'loss leaders' as they either get a kick back from the manufacturer/wholesaler or they have full control of their supply chain so they manipulate their loads.
My best example is a $50 item had a 35% margin due to loads. If sourced externally it could cost the company ~$40. This retailer had full control of the supply chain and was a volume customer so the internal purchase price of the item was $1.29.
What item can they produce for $1.29 but not buy in for less than $40?
Almost anything branded in specialty retail.
Generally speaking you are looking at 50%-60% (100-150% mark up) or more margin on fresh short shelf life products (cheese, meats and so on), 30% on dry (tuna, pasta). It varies a lot though, even within the same category
Who decides what fresh fruits are sourced for a particular store? I see some stores have more tropical fruits than others.
We do manual ordering for produce but item ranging is done by HQ.
Based on ease of access and distribution from supplier to dc or store.
Thought it would be based on how non-white the local area was…
That too. I read the question wrong, "ethnic" ranging is the way they're heading.
Does your store inject iodine into the fresh meat to make it look redder therefore fresher when it goes brownish after being on the shelf for too long? I know a butcher at one of the big two who has told me that they do this and he is not too happy about it.
I'm not too sure about that one, if we did it wouldn't be at a store level. Our butcher isn't the guy who'd enjoy ripping people off, he takes great pride in his product.
I didn't think many stores still had a butcher on site and that all the meat was packed off site and delivered ready to sell with prices already on them.
If you know said person, then you have your answer? Lol.
I was asking if it is a widespread practice. "lol"
Which supermarket chain do you work at? Coles or Woolies? Hey, it's an AMA!