While I was a produce specialist, I once spent a day visiting stores with a district manager, or DM.
As someone in charge of up to 15 high-volume stores, the DM’s word carried a lot of weight. One of the stores we visited was going through a major remodel, and the store remained open for business through most of the process.
This is a difficult way to manage a remodel, as it involves torn up flooring, tradespeople all over the place, frequently rearranged products and pallets of merchandise in aisles — a real mess that made it difficult to shop.
One clear message the DM conveyed to managers and employees was: “I don’t want a single customer inconvenienced.”
That’s a great attitude to have, isn’t it? Sure, the DM showed concern for the remodel, its progress, staying on schedule, on budget and more — all critical points — but nothing should ever be so important that you lose sight of who’s ultimately paying the tab: the customer.
As a produce buyer at a foodservice distributor many years later, I always remembered the DM and his customer focus. I viewed the salespeople in our organization as my internal customers, especially when managing countless calls for same-day, specialty produce orders. These orders had an early afternoon cutoff, as the local Coosemans vendor needed time to ship the items to our warehouse for a JIT, which is a just-in-time delivery for shipment that same night. Some days the special orders list was quite long, but we managed to fill most of what the customers wanted.
Routines are interrupted. It happens. At a later point, I was reassigned to help in the warehouse as a produce quality inspector.
As a result, my special-order duties were picked up by another buyer who personally disliked being bothered with the numerous, special-order phone calls. He abruptly demanded that the salespeople stop calling and instead email him their special orders. On the surface, I thought that this was a reasonable alternative and perhaps a more effective way to manage the daunting chore.
It was, but it wasn’t.
Since this method took extended time to dig out a laptop to email the orders (This was years before smartphones.), most salespeople found it difficult to send in the special orders in time for the cutoff, delaying the customer orders for at least a day — or not sending them at all. The result? Fewer orders came in, meaning poor service, less produce volume for the company and more business for the competition, who still accepted phone-in orders.
The buyer made things convenient for himself but harder for the salespeople (his internal customers) and more difficult for the end-user customer too.
The fresh produce business is like any other: Provide product and service for your customers in the easiest manner possible. This can range from making the ordering software user-friendly to picking up a phone to physically removing barriers such as not blocking aisles in the produce department, all so your customer can easily maneuver, shop and reach whatever they desire.
Adjusting a work model as seamlessly for yourself certainly makes sense, however, consider what you do and how it affects your customers. Make everything as convenient as possible for them, or it’s all for naught.
Armand Lobato’s more than 50 years of experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions. He has written a weekly retail column for nearly two decades.
