As a supermarket manager, you feel responsible not only for the ups and downs of your shop, but also indirectly for the area around it. When shopping trolleys lying around cause a nuisance, people logically tend to look to the supermarket manager. Such was the case at a large supermarket in a medium-sized city in Germany. The manager explains, “Too many of our shopping trolleys were not returned. Later we found them in the neighbourhood or they disappeared completely. We noticed that we had to start deploying our staff at fixed times to go and pick up shopping trolleys from all over the city. It was clear that something had to be done, because the cost of the lost shopping trolleys as well as the hours we were losing kept increasing.”
The turnaround came when the municipality also became involved. The manager continues: “Because all the shopping trolleys lying around ruined the streetscape, the municipality also collected trolleys itself. We could then buy them back on payment of a fine. Because all parties saw that this was not a desirable situation, we came to a good solution. With the help of a municipal grant, we implemented the Rocateq solution. The municipality financed the installation of the antenna cable and we covered the cost of the Rocateq wheels. Thus, all stakeholders got an outcome that was advantageous to them.”
Around the car park of our shop, Rocateq installed the antenna cable. The Rocateq Transmitter is installed securely and out of sight in the shop so it can always be reached.
The Rocateq wheels fit perfectly under each shopping trolley and were installed within a few hours. Customers were not inconvenienced by the work, because the engineers carried out the assembly during quiet hours and in sessions.
After installation, the Rocateq team informed the supermarket staff about how the new system works. Through signs in the shopping trolleys and red marker lines, customers also get to know how everything works.
The results are impressive. The manager continues, “Since we have been working with Rocateq’s solution, not a single shopping trolley has disappeared. This not only saves on the cost of stolen trolleys, but also on the time and energy we were spending on constantly retrieving the shopping trolleys. Our employees are now doing what they love to do: working in our tidy shop with a smile on their face. And perhaps most importantly, the appearance and atmosphere in the neighbourhood have improved tremendously. Our shop has a better reputation because there are no trolleys with our logo on them wandering around, and we no longer get complaints from local residents or the municipality. Everyone is happy.”
Rocateq paid for itself in under a year, and our loss per incident fell from $200–$300 to about $50.
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