Grocery stores consistently face the ups and downs of the economy. In just the last two years, grocers have seen increased revenue at the beginning of the pandemic and rising costs with inflation. Circle The Wagons was created to save independent grocery stores money on not-for-resale goods and services. We’ve sourced the best vendors and negotiated contracts to get you the best deals on these goods and services.
As we’ve developed those savings with our vendor partners, we’ve realized there are also ways not just to save money, but to earn more. Circle The Wagons combines the value of a traditional group purchasing organization with the innovation of profit enhancement. Here are 4 ways that we can help you save money and drive revenue at your independent grocery store.
CTW Can Help Grocers With Loss Prevention
CTW co-founders Bill Alford and Barton Howard have decades of experience working with loss prevention for major grocery chains across the United States. We have a number of vendor partners who can help independent grocers with reducing losses. IDScan.net, a world leader in ID verification, offers a customized platform to help retailers manage vendor receiving and reduce fraud, reduce refund fraud and ensure compliance with mandated store operations and applicable laws in real-time across stores. Tally Solutions and SmartShelf ™ will stop organized retail criminals in their tracks.
CTW Vendors Help You Spend Less
CTW offers the traditional group purchasing organization benefits of cost reduction. One of our newest vendor partners, SIB Fixed Cost Reduction offers a free analysis of your spending on more than ten significant expense lines. These include bank fees, trash dumpsters and compactors, payroll processing, armored car, property taxes and more. They can help you find lower rates for those services. One of our most popular programs is ODP Business Solutions (formerly Office Depot). CTW members can use the customized portal to manage this spend and save 15% to 25% on office supplies like paper, ink, toner, and more. We have cost saving programs for insurance through Gallagher, phone and internet with ProfitComm, uniforms through Aramark, and grocery equipment with Grocery Equipment Sales and The Peggs Company.
To Save Money and Drive Revenue for Grocery Stores, We Take A New Approach to Profit Protection
Margins have always been tight for grocery retailers, and we are taking smart approaches to protecting profits. One of our newest partnerships is with Danavation Technologies. Danavation will offer their Digital Smart Labels™ and integrated pricing solution to CTW members. These Digital Smart Labels™ reduce labor and increase efficiencies of labor. You don’t have to sort paper shelf tags, throw away tags that don’t apply to your store, remove old tags or hang new tags every week. ESLs allow a retailer to easily change the price of items across many stores.
CTW Innovates with Profit Enhancement
We help retailers see new opportunities to increase profits. Because of our decades of experience in the grocery industry, we understand that grocers not only need to lower costs, but need new opportunities for growth.
We’ve partnered with Kiosk Prepaid to provide independent grocers with an innovative payments kiosk with multiple service offerings that most retailers now provide using precious labor hours. Some of the services include check cashing, bill pay, crypto, and wire remittance. In addition to having negotiated a lower kiosk price for CTW members, retailers will keep a high percentage of the fees earned on transactions at the kiosk.
Knowing that dead space in grocery stores and parking lots presents an opportunity for revenue, we’ve also partnered with LUX Solutions. LUX offers no-cost solar installation to reduce and manage your energy costs and materials for qualified grocery stores and no-cost electric vehicle charging stations with shared revenue for store owners. We are also actively working with other vendors to bring the future of grocery retail to independent grocers.
For a full list of our vendor partners, click here. If you’re interested in any of these not-for-resale goods or services, email us today or give us a call 985-805-6289. We can analyze your current vendors and your needs, and find out how to start saving you money today.
