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Overcome 5 Fresh Produce "Ordering" Pitfalls to Improve Shrink Management

1/6/2020

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While many factors influence the shrink percentage within your company or stores a significant impact can often be discovered your process for ordering.  Let's explore a few common challenges that can be undermining the gross profit of your fresh produce department.

Produce Ordering Pitfalls
  • Ordering on the Fly:  Winging your order from your desk rather than walking the floor and coolers is a perfect way to inflate in-store inventories.  Increasing the time items fruits and vegetables remain in storage before sale typically decreases overall freshness by the time items reach display promoting incremental shrink.
  • Ordering without Specifications:  Ordering random sizes and intermittent quality levels of specific produce items can create displays where customers pick over items to choose the freshest, largest, or best looking items bypassing the items you might need to sell first to maintain freshness and move product through your inventory.   This act can leave remaining items on display to deteriorate generating shrink.  
  • Ordering from Questionable or Inconsistent Distributors or Shippers:  Don't order shrink!  While no one would intentionally order bad product, there's many suppliers selling items quickly ready to become shrink.  Working with intentional, quality, best-in-class suppliers will help you minimize loss.  Receiving top notch fresh produce gives you extra days to sell it while influencing a more successful and flavorful at-home eating experience to keep customers coming back.  The more questionable freshness the less likely customers will buy.  Undermined trust and resulting foot traffic drops in your stores will instantly make shrink management even more difficult! 
  • Inexperienced Ordering:  Don't allow inexperienced team members write your order.  Remember that your purchase represents thousands or tens of thousands of dollars and requires the upmost attention and care.  Rather, ensure on-the-job training and coaching walks new orderers through the process and quickly addresses "hiccups" should a poor call be made.  There's always room for minor mistakes, but ensure your team learns from them.
  • Ordering Mistakes: Remember the time a random box of something you don't usually sell arrived at your back receiving dock?  A simple mispunch or a wrong number and you might have a case of obscure tropical fruit on your hands.  Slow down and ensure accuracy and you'll likely drop dollars to your market's bottom line.

Remember many aspects of fresh produce shrink are controllable or influencable by committment to many wise but simple day to day practices.  Implement these tips into your ordering process and do your part to manage shrink.  A few percentage points of improvement can result in substantial impact on your gross profit!

Book a Shrink Management Consultation Today
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Announcing a Merchandise Food / ZingTrain Collaborative 2 Day Seminar: Money Making MerchandiZing.

1/1/2020

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It was bound to happen.  After building a great friendship with Maggie Bayless at ZingTrain we decided to collaborate on a special seminar to help food retailers up their merchandising game.   We called it, "Money Making Merchandizing" and here's what it's all about:
Create retail spaces where customers WANT to buy!Designed specifically for food purveyors but with tips and tools that can benefit any brick and mortar retailer, this seminar will help you make the most of limited resources and get front-line staff involved in creating an exciting environment that generates sales.  This seminar combines the lessons learned since Zingerman’s Delicatessen opened in 1982 with insights from merchandising expert Jonathan Raduns. 
We’ll talk about the difference between marketing and merchandising (no, they are not the same!) and share proven tools for building great displays, developing effective signage, and defining your business’s look and feel.  We’ll address the importance of product mix, pricing, promotions, store layout and more. Last but not least, we will share tips for how to work closely with vendors to maximize their support.

Come to this 2-day seminar to:
  • Get actionable tools for creating the kind of in-store merchandising that leads to sales!
  • Learn how to engage everyone in your organization–from leadership to the front-line–in merchandising your products and services so that customers WANT to buy!
  • Find a network of peers to call upon to help you get past roadblocks.
  • Laugh out loud, have a-ha moments and realize that lots of well meaning and well run organizations face the challenges you do.
  • Tour Zingerman’s Deli and other Zingerman's businesses for a behind-the-scenes peek of how we do things here.
  • Eat delicious Zingerman’s breakfasts, lunches and snacks catered by our oldest and newest businesses, and everything in between.
  • Get buzzed on coffee roasted by Zingerman’s Coffee Company and treats from Zingerman’s Bakehouse, Creamery and Candy Company!
You can find all the details and sign up directly on the ZingTrain site here.
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Discover How Color Psychology Can Spice Up Your Online Food Marketing

12/19/2018

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By Guest Blogger: Milja Milenkovic
Colors play a tremendous role in the food industry. Any chef will tell you the visual importance of color combinations when plating food. Vibrant colors are a generally accepted indicator of great taste, and when it comes to advertising, especially online food marketing, colors are indispensable. This is certainly true where your pictures and images are concerned, but what about the rest of your web design? Does it really matter what colors you choose for the different elements on your website?


Indeed, the answer to that question is a resounding ‘Yes! According to DesignAdvisor, 93% of shoppers report visuals as the number one factor influencing their purchase decisions.  Studies have shown that different colors tend to affect the human psyche in different ways, often on a subliminal or subconscious level. This effect can have an impact on moods, attitudes, and emotions, which in turn lead to corresponding actions and behavior.

So what exactly are these messages and meanings, and how can you use color psychology to give your online food marketing a boost? Let’s have a look at seven of the most prevalent colors and how they may or may not be suitable for your food-related industry.

7 Colors and their Meanings

·         RED – Cherries, Beetroot, Strawberry Jam and Peppers
Red is a feisty color and one patently suited to the food sector. It sends a message of passion and energy, while also suggesting speed and urgency. As a matter of fact, some people even experience an increased heart rate when they see the color red. If you’re in the business of selling fast food, red is a great color to utilize.


·         YELLOW – Bananas, Sweet Corn, Custard and Butter
After red, yellow is the next most popular and effective color where food branding is concerned. This bright, cheerful, energetic color is even purported to stimulate hunger pangs, which is ideal when you have something delicious on offer. Spread some warmth and joy while you satisfy your customers’ needs.


·         ORANGE – Pumpkin Pie, Carrots, Papaya, and Orange Juice
Another warm and energetic color, orange gives a message of confidence, ambition, and enthusiasm. It symbolizes creativity and youthfulness. It works well for technology and healthcare brands but is not quite as sought after in the food industry. However, before you discard orange altogether, bear in mind that it can be very effective as the color for your CTA button.


·         BLUE – Blueberry Pie and Blue Cheese
Although blue is the most common favorite color worldwide, signifying peace, trustworthiness, and tranquillity, it is not particularly popular in the food sector. This is largely due to the fact that there isn’t an abundance of blue foods found in nature. You might be able to use it as an accent color though, or for one of the less prominent elements of your web design.


·         GREEN – Cucumber Sandwiches, Pea Soup, Green Tea and Green Smoothies
Green is the color of nature, growth, and health. It gives a feeling of freshness and is a calming, relaxing and soothing color. Green is an excellent choice for food-related companies, especially health conscious ones, focused on organic and environmentally friendly products.


·         PURPLE – Aubergines, Mulberries, and Purple Beans
There’s something sophisticated, royal, and even mysterious about this rich and beautiful color. Although it is exceptionally well suited to the health and beauty industry, it can also be used to full advantage in the food sector. This is especially true if you have an upmarket or exclusive range of delicacy products. Purple also combines well with other colors, creating a striking effect.


·         PINK – Watermelon, Pink Cocktails, Marshmallows, and Strawberry Milk
No doubt about it – pink is pretty. Pink can be put to good use in certain niches of the food industry. It is a warm and sensitive color which sends a message of sincerity, respect and nurture while also evoking feelings of opportunity and possibilities.

Now that you have these color psychology insights, it’s time to take a good look at your web design and see where you may be able to make a few changes to help enhance your message. Check out this color psychology infographic for more facts and stats to help you spice things up and generate more conversions for your business.

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Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading: A Guest Post by Zingerman's Ari Weinzweig

10/4/2018

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Note from Merchandise Food:  We've learned a lot from our friends at Zingerman's and ZingTrain over the years, and are thankful for this guest post to share a little more about their the books, work, and business beliefs that have fueled Zingerman's iconic reputation in the food business.  Check it out:

A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to The Power of Beliefs in Business
by Ari Weinzweig

​For as much as I’ve studied, taught, and written about both business and self-management over the years, up until recently I’d hardly paid a coffee cup’s worth of attention to the ways in which beliefs were impacting my world. In the course of Parts 1, 2, and 3of the books that make up the Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading series, I’ve covered mission, vision, values, culture, Servant Leadership, self-management, creativity, anarchism, and a whole lot more. At ZingTrain our training business, we teach 9 different two day seminars on leadership and organizational development.  And yet it’s only in the last few years that beliefs are finally getting their just due.

It turns out that I’d “discovered” a major player in the drama and dreams that make up my life, both personally and professionally. It was as if I’d been focusing on the play itself, the lines of the script, and the way actors sounded from the stage, but altogether ignoring the playwright who wrote the words and set the stage—literally and figuratively—for them to all be there doing what they do. What changed when I began to dial into the details and depths of what I believe, and to look into what others around me believed as well. It blew my mind. And it’s already having a big impact on our organization.

Although they don’t have their own line on the balance sheet, beliefs abound in the business world. But since few of us actually acknowledge them for what they are, or understand their import, they’re essentially invisible. Beliefs, though, are where almost every action, conscious and unconscious, begins. Whether we know it or not, our beliefs create—for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer—the complex reality in which we struggle to succeed every day.
When I talk about beliefs here I’m not referring to religion, sports or politics.  While they’re commonly discussed beliefs, I’m interested for these purposes in less frequently talked about issues.  I’m exploring what we believe about ourselves, about our products, about people in general and our coworkers in particular.  What we believe about the marketplace, about competition, about organizational culture. And if you want to—as I have—carry this work into your personal life, then looking also at what we believe about our lives, our significant others, our kids, what success means, etc.  Suffice it to say that literally everything about our organizations—and our lives—is based, I’ve now realized, on what we believe. As psychologist William James wrote: “Belief creates the actual fact.” 

Here are two learnings that are at the core of this entire book:
a) In the course of researching for the book, I started to see beliefs in three broad categories.  Negative beliefs, neutral beliefs and positive beliefs. Negative beliefs create negative outcomes.  Neutral beliefs don’t do a whole lot.  Positive beliefs create positive outcomes.  You simply can’t get positive outcomes out of negative beliefs.  You can generate a lot of short term energy out of negative beliefs.  But in the long run the energy that emerges from negative beliefs will either just flame out and die, or keep us trapped in back and forth, no-win, cycles of pain and emotional violence. A great healthy sustainable organization, I started to realize, can only be built on positive beliefs.
 
b) We can change our beliefs!! That’s right, we can choose what we believe!  Once we know we have beliefs, become mindful of what they are and understand how much impact they’re having on our lives, we may likely realize—as I did on my many subjects—that what we believe is creating a lot of the reality that we often don’t like.  And that the most effective way to change our daily reality is to not to try to get others around us to change, but to look inward, to change what we believe.  About ourselves, about the people we’re frustrated with, about the world. 
 
Two other subjects covered in the book are also big contributors to organizational culture, health, engagement, and effectiveness.  Hope and the spirit of generosity.  Each is essential to building a healthy, caring, sustainable organization. And, of course, because we’re a food business, the book also includes a dozen or so recipes to use in your kitchen.  A Tunisian couscous with octopus and harissa.  Our challah bread from the Bakehouse.  Chocolate-dipped-espresso cookies from the Bakehouse, and more!
 
Our beliefs, and their impact on our organizations, have not historically won big headlines.  But in the six months or so that The Power of Beliefs in Business has been out it’s already having a huge impact on our own organization and on others who have been to our ZingTrain seminars or read the book themselves.  Just this morning I got an email from a business leader on the East Coast who wrote: “I’m reading through Part 4 and I can’t tell you how it’s helped me focus and be a better leader as we are growing (which is not easy as you know).  But being able to manage my actions/reactions has proven so beneficial for our team (and for me) whom all I know are working just as hard as I am!”       

Learn more at www.zingtrain.com or www.zingermans.com
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How to Open a Grab & Go Food Market: Step 4: Define Fixtures & Equipment Type Needs

9/27/2018

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STEP 4: DEFINE FIXTURES & EQUIPMENT "TYPE" NEEDS
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Let your Store Layout & Product Mix Frame Equipment & Fixture Needs: Next, use the product categories, draft store layout, and food service programs to build a list of required equipment types.  The goal isn't to specify of obtain quotes for an exact make and model.  Loosely define the approximate sizes and features your equipment.  Allow space parameters to aid the process.  If 10 linear feet of wall space is available you won't need 12 feet of open air coolers.  If you plan to sell pastries, then write down whether you'll need a self-service glass door case or a low contoured service display case to match your anticipated service model.  Be as descriptive as possible.  Remember, there's much to be determined, but there's also a lot you already know about your vision.  Use this list to map possible locations for each program to your store layout.  Consider how guests might move through the space.  Try to limit congestion or bottlenecks by placing high-volume programs (i.e. coffee) in more open accessible locations. Typically certain constraints of the space will will naturally or logically guide programs and equipment will "land."  Frequently, upright open air refrigeration is anchored on a perimeter wall. ​

We hope this simplistic D.I.Y. overview helps you plan the initial stages of your grab & go food outlet.  A successful opening also includes point of sale technology selection, packaging, pricing, labeling, and plan-o-grams, opening merchandising, training, etc.  Many of our clients find that involving our expertise in the planning process or simply outsourcing work to our firm helps them open, revamp or maintain markets with greater potential.  Merchandise Food can help!

Don't missed opportunities. Let Merchandise Food help you define
the right type of equipment to suit your retail vision.  

NEED HELP OR ADVICE?
DISCUSS YOUR NEXT PROJECT WITH US:
CLICK OR CALL 856-344-5680 TO SCHEDULE A CONSULTATION
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How to Open a Grab & Go Food Market: Step 3: Create a Draft Store Layout

9/27/2018

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STEP 3: CREATE A DRAFT STORE LAYOUT
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​Let the Shape & Parameters of your Space Guide You: The size and shape of your available store footprint and common retail industry best practices we've all seen and experienced shopping can help to guide your layout process.  Start by obtaining an architectural drawing of the space or creating a basic layout on graph paper yourself by taking accurate measurements with a tape measure. 

​Use Product Offering Categories to Guide your Layout: 
Once you've framed the space, start to plot or sketch product categories into areas of the store.  If items are generally merchandised on dry shelves or refrigeration, note these areas on the map and the product categories envision there.  Continue the process until all your food service programs and product categories have a "home."  Remember to include space for seating, aisles, queuing, food production or assembly.  Brainstorm and play around with different options.  My might get to a good basic layout after 5 attempts or even 20.  Remember your concepts are not an architectural plan headed to the construction team, but more an inspiration to guide early planning and conversations.  Hopefully with the added input of your project team, the layout will change and be molded for the better as other perspectives are considered and included within the plan.  

Request & Accept Outside Advice Where Needed: There's likely information or factors outside of your knowledge that might tweak your draft layout down the road.  If it's not available in-house, gain retail expertise to optimize your available footprint and vertical space to influence higher future sales after opening.  
GO TO STEP 4: DEFINE EQUIPMENT & FIXTURES TYPE NEEDS

Don't settle for a basic layout that misses opportunities.
Let Merchandise Food help you consider "outside of the box"
methods to optimize your available space.

SCHEDULE A CONSULTATION WITH MERCHANDISE FOOD
CLICK OR CALL 856-344-5680 TO SCHEDULE A CONSULTATION
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How to Open a Grab & Go Food Market: Step 2: Define Menu & Product Offering Categories

9/27/2018

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STEP 2: DEFINE MENU & PRODUCT OFFERING CATEGORIES
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HOW TO OPEN A GRAB & GO MARKET E-BOOK
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Let Customers Needs & Industry Trends Guide Product Mix Development: Customers needs, business goals, supplier recommendations, and industry trends are all important factors in building a unique and strong product mix.  Start by assessing your local competitors.  

Allow Competition to Influence your Mix: Consider what items you may need to offer to compete and incremental items your store can offer which competitors are not.   After competitive inspiration, we've found creating a conceptual high-level menu & product list offering first is a useful exercise.  Include only categories and subcategories.  For instance: (Category: Snacks Subcategories: Candy, Salty Snacks or Sweet Snacks). 

Allow for Vendors Product Suggestions: Working with vendors later in the process will help to determine what products and flavors will actually end up on your shelves.  For now keep it high level, and use this list to interact with your vendors when the time comes.

Let Opportunity Guide your Offerings: In addition to packaged foods, be sure to add foodservice program offerings.  Will you offer coffee, espresso, breakfast sandwiches, fresh bakery, etc.?  If you've got a captive audience, why not?  Begin to define everything you'll offer so we can map them to a general store location in the next step.   ​
GO TO STEP 3: CREATE A DRAFT STORE LAYOUT

​

SCHEDULE A CONSULTATION WITH MERCHANDISE FOOD
CLICK OR CALL 856-344-5680 TO SCHEDULE A CONSULTATION
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How to Open a Grab & Go Food Market: Step 1: Determine a Retail Strategy

9/27/2018

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How to Open a Grab & Go Market: Determine a Store Vision
STEP 1: DETERMINE YOUR RETAIL STRATEGY
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Grab & Go markets are operated in a variety of approaches.  Whether your hotel lobby features a small cooler, or your airport terminal outlet is filled with a robust offering your model is important. Depending on the selected method, successful operators adjust store layouts and design to increase selling space, foster enjoyable shopping experiences and influence efficient operations.  Contemplate the thoughts below to streamline and simply your planning process.  

Select a Business / Staffing Model: First, consider whether an attended (staffed) or unattended self-service marketplace best suits your business.  Labor requirements offer guest's service and assistance yet will impact your profitability.  Could staff assist shoppers only during peak day-parts to speed check-out and payment transactions?  Would busy guests prefer using intuitive software for self-checkout and payment? Or maybe a high level of guest interaction best aligns with your brand.  There's no right answer, but simply ensure you a have considered your demographic's 
expectations and needs.

Let your Business Model Frame Equipment Needs: Innately your chosen service / staffing model will guide your market's equipment needs.  
Unattended markets generally feature entirely self-service coolers and heated units to merchandise pre-packaged products.  Alternatively, attended markets often leverage refrigerated or ambient service display cases where attendants select, containerize, and present foods to order.  

Allocate Space by Defining Grab & Go and or Made_to-Order Food Offerings: Modern market & restaurant concepts often feature a mix of pre-packaged and made to order foods.  Will you?  If so, significant space will be required for cooking or food assembly areas, restrooms & seating.  

Let your Vision Guide an Intentional Store Design:  As you can now probably imagine, your retail strategy and offerings will significantly impact layout, use of space, design and your operational model.  As a result, It is important to schedule cross-functional conversations with construction, ownership, design and operations teams to make essential decisions early on. 

Avoid Design vs. Operations Pitfalls: Unfortunately, many markets are planned in silos or pre-planned years in advance before capital funding is secured.  The result can be a space planned with minimal flexibility or designed to be operated in one fashion, but later actually operated in another driving inefficiency, and employee and customer frustration. In our retail consulting work, we've regularly seen totally pre-packaged grab & go foods awkwardly stacked behind glass in refrigerated display cases.  All the benefits of grab & go food without the ability to self-shop.  These scenarios create significant missed sales opportunities.  Ensure plans are aligned to the operational model and updated for current retailing and shopping behaviors before construction begins!  Otherwise you'll commit to locking in under-performance for years to come.


Hopefully you have begun see how business model factors impact one another?
GO TO STEP 2: DEFINE MENU & PRODUCT OFFERING CATEGORIES

Need help considering a a service and business approach?
Let Merchandise Food review your space &
offer third-party perspectives.

SCHEDULE A CONSULTATION WITH MERCHANDISE FOOD
CLICK OR CALL 586-344-5680 TO SCHEDULE A CONSULTATION
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How to Open a Grab & Go Food Market: Building a Store Strategy

9/24/2018

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GRAB & GO FOODS ANIMATION
Grab & go food markets offer a timely, on-trend, opportunity to profit for your hotel, resort, or retail food store.  However, the potential success of a grab & go food marketplace is heavily tied to successful planning, retail strategy, optimal use of space, and profitable product assortment. In the design world, many designers request a "creative brief" to summarize and create a framework guide the design process.  In the same way, we have outlined a simple process to define and outline your initial store vision.  Many more important questions and answers will sprout from this process and a list of action items and special projects will be required to move from concept to reality.  We highly suggest engaging retail expertise, a designer, architect, equipment or food suppliers and of course, your food and beverage leadership team in the process to fill in the details and offer advice to optimize space for sales performance.    
STEP 1: DETERMINE YOUR RETAIL STRATEGY
Determine your Retail Strategy
STEP 2: BUILD A HIGH-LEVEL MENU & PRODUCT CATEGORY OUTLINE
Select Grab & Go Menu & Product Types
STEP 3: CREATE A DRAFT STORE LAYOUT
Create a Draft Grab & Go Store Layout
STEP 4:  DEFINE HIGH-LEVEL EQUIPMENT & FIXTURE 'TYPE" REQUIREMENTS
Define Fixture & Equipment Types

Already have a store vision?  Let Merchandise Food optimize, simplify,
& speed your food market plan, opening, or revamp with our
retail advisory & project services: 

 SCHEDULE A CONSULTATION WITH MERCHANDISE FOOD
CLICK OR CALL 856-344-5680 TO SCHEDULE A CONSULTATION
Use this process to get started and point your project in the right direction.  Read through our upcoming posts to learn 4 steps to build a grab & go market vision.  These steps will help you more clearly communicate your service & operations plan, merchandising approach, equipment needs.  While much more ​work is to be done.

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About Merchandise Food: Many retailers lack time, merchandising & retail expertise to reach their potential.  We pinpoint issues in existing sites or future plans and advise your team or implement projects & in-store solutions for you so you can have more unique, beautiful and profitable spaces.
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Acme @ Union Station Denver: Food concept and merchandising excellence!

7/25/2018

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The next time you visit Denver check out the foodie experience and merchandising seen at a nicely curated mix of food concepts at Union Station. Check out ACME for beautifully presented sandwiches which nicely visually highlight their fresh ingredients. Attention to detail abounds in this little outlet packing a great visual food experience. Menu items are well signed and labeled aiding the guests' shopping experience.
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A nice little sandwhich or bagel dressing bar adds a fun element and interactive experience to customize menu items to order.
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The Acme Pizza Concept is beautifully laid out and features good looking fresh examples of pizza menu offerings accompanied by grab and go formatted salads, sides, beverages and packaged snacks. This unique little food kiosk packs a lot of punch and high quality food merchandising with their freshly prepared made to order foods! Great job ACME and our food business success wishes!
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    Food Merchandising Blog: Ideas & Tips to Help you Grow Your Food Market

    Jonathan Raduns

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