Thread by @yorksranter

Has anyone else noticed supermarkets putting in old school high racking? Extra shelving for unopened stock over the racks? Two of my locals have done this in last 2 weeks

This is something I haven't seen in British supermarkets since I worked for Kwikkies back in 1996-1998

We used to have an extra, heavy weight layer of shelving above the ones customers use, loaded with cases of stock. During trading you'd walk the floor pulling out cardboard from the shelves and pulling stock forwards

Then, either at the start or end of the day, you'd get a ladder and knock down cases from the high racking to fill the shelves

Obviously, you would then fill the high racking with stock from the stock room when a delivery came in.

Kwikkies did this because its supply chain practice was ancient: we had computer accounting but managers would phone in orders off a print out into HQ

This was how Lyons Maid did it in the 1950s with their Leo mainframe! Because we were inefficient we needed to hold more stock at each level of the system.

Now, why would you suddenly want to start operating like 1990s Kwikkies? Well, if you thought you might need to hold a lot more stock.

And you're willing to wear the cost and the productivity hit and the effect of making the aisles look like shit.

The space up there is free, though, and doesn't need planning permission or really anything much. So you move the stock from the wagons into the shops. You can't do this with anything fresh or frozen...

But you can use the space freed up in the back shop to put in another freezer.

So, folks, have you seen the racks? #Bracksit #Retail #Logistics