Category Management & Foodservice
Sell What Makes You Invaluable
Data can tell you what products people want and at what price. But it takes deep insight to know what they expect from your brand and on your shelves. Make the wrong choices, and you forfeit sales dollars. Worse, you could jeopardize customer relationships.
Master both the art and science of getting your mix right
By adopting an approach that combines the power of analytics with an in-depth understanding of customer behavior, you can determine the right mix of products to generate profits, reflect your brand, and strengthen your customer connections. When your mix checks all three boxes, it puts you in the best position to capture greater share of wallet and increase your market share.
Through the W. Capra approach to Category Management & Foodservice, you will:
Create merchandising and fresh food programs that differentiate and strengthen your brand.
Improve sales performance and margins through the right price and promotional investments, category positioning and space allocation, and actionable analytics.
Develop an operations playbook and a well-trained team capable of delivering the right products and the right experience.
Enhance the overall shopping and customer buying experience.
How We Help
Merchandise & Foodservice Strategy & Management
Connect the Dots for True Business Alignment
Merchandise management success is defined as the right item, in the right place, at the right price, and the right time. Adopt a comprehensive approach to ensure that you bring in the right items and successfully manage their ongoing performance and profitability.
Assortment Strategy
Make Your Assortment Unique and Relevant
Determining the right mix of products and optimizing category space is the first step to offering a differentiating assortment and generating an excellent return on inventory. By successfully leveraging your brand strategy to shape and develop supportive categories, you can create a unique, relevant, and strategic assortment that reflects what customers desire most from your brand.
Pricebook
Manage Your Business Effectively
In many ways, the Pricebook is the lifeblood of your business. Not only is it the master database of the items you sell, a well-managed Pricebook protects your margins, minimizes inventory and accounting discrepancies, and keeps your vendors in check. Proper Pricebook set up and management is essential to ensure smooth operations, accurate financials, and a positive customer experience.
Pricing & Promotion Architecture
Drive Value through Innovative Pricing and Promotions
Building the right pricing and promotional architecture begins with your brand’s value proposition. Whether it’s investing in select products or categories to drive trips or building promotional bundles that expand the basket size, creating differentiation requires an element of art (consumer behavior) and science (analytics).
Negotiations & Contracts
Maximize the Amount of Funding Spent on Your Brand
Utilize effective negotiation strategies to give your brand an advantage when it comes to funding. Learn tactics to structure contracts that result in more funding at lower costs, market the value of your brand, and develop mutually beneficial arrangements.
Margin Gap Analysis
Understand How Your Category Margins Compare to Top Retailers
Maximizing category margins depends on three key elements: 1) Optimizing price and promotional spend at retail, 2) Ascertaining the maximum amount of vendor dollars, and 3) Minimizing supply/logistic costs. Understand how your category margins compare to NACS (National Association of Convenience Stores) top quartile retailers and learn how to build the right plans to close any gaps.
Training & Operations
Position Your Team to Profitably Meet and Exceed Customer Expectations
As consumer trends evolve and competition increases, it’s critical for your category management and foodservice teams to stay on top of latest strategies and techniques and to make sure their skills are always polished. A customized training and operations program aligns your teams and provides the playbook and confidence they need to execute effectively every day and successfully deliver the right products and overall brand experience.
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Staff Augmentation
Keep your business transformation on track.
It can be hard to find the right people with the right skill set for any job these days, and your customer-first business transformation initiatives are no exception. Whether you need senior leadership, IT or payments specialists, business intelligence support, finance or accounting leadership, category managers, loyalty experts, or developers and programmers, recruiting and onboarding the best talent takes time and resources you don’t have to spare.
Whether it’s one of our own well-qualified team members or an industry associate, we make sure you get the talent you need to keep moving forward.
Opportunities for Impact Are
Everywhere. Let’s Get Started.
Contact us to learn more about how we can help.