LESSON 6: DEPARTMENT RESETS

Every now and then it’s good to rearrange your department to just shake things up a bit. It will force your shoppers to develop new routes to their favorite products and along the way, they are more likely to notice new items as well as seasonal impulse items that might have been overlooked otherwise.

Top compelling reasons to do a reset:

• New case(s) installation
• Underperforming department
• Deep cleaning
• Store opening
• SKU rationalization
• The influx of several new items
  
  

Step 1: Choose the Cheeses  

• Run a sales report to identify sales ranking.
• Categorize all of the cheeses that will go in your set into the categories and subcategories that your customers will understand.  For your reference, these are the “Cheese Set Categories” that the cheeses we sell fall into: 

• It’s better to start by over-itemizing instead of under-itemizing, then deprioritize based on space constraints and sales.
• Sort your items by cheese set categories and volume to ensure that your customer's needs are well-represented by items with the highest sales potential.
  
  

Step 2: Sort the Cheeses

By Cheese Set Category – Each category should be represented, the more available real estate, the more variety within each category.

By Size

• Small Format
  • Merchandise closest to the customer, in front (of a reach-in coffin case) or in the middle (in a multi-deck case)
• Medium (Wheels)
  • Portions reformed as a whole, behind (in coffin cases)
  • or below (in multi-decks) smaller format cheeses 
• Medium (Cups)
  • Merchandise on the top shelves of a (multi-deck) case
  • or behind small and medium-sized wheels (coffin case)
• Medium (Cuts)
  • Can be used as building blocks, creating shapes cascading towards the customer
  • Communicates freshness and abundance
  • Best merchandised underneath small cheese (multi-deck) or behind small cheeses (coffin case)
• Large & X-Large Cheeses – can be farther from the customer
  • Kept whole to add height, branding, color, texture, freshness, abundance
  • Best displayed behind small and medium-sized cheeses (coffin case)
  • Above or below small/medium-sized cheese (multi-deck)
  • Ambient displays cross-merchandized with accompaniments
    
    

Step 3: Determine Layout

Draft the Layout

• Sketch where cheese set categories will go.
  • Make sure to allow enough real estate for the number of items in each category.
  • Be mindful about keeping higher moisture cheeses in the most temperature-stable areas.
• Anchor cheese set category with its most important representative.
  
  
• Consider relative cheese sizes to consistently place smaller items closer to the customer and larger items farther away
  
  
• Determine the “prime” real estate areas, considering:
  • What will customers see first? Choose enticing “impulse buy” cheeses.
  • Where will customers naturally converge? Merchandise popular, desirable cheeses.
  • What areas will the customer likely see only when they fully enter the department to shop? Use for more commonplace, commodity items.
     

Step 4: Principles for Resetting a Cheese Display

• Work in pairs, if possible.
• Reset during off hours.
• Keep like items together (identify the cheese set category for each of your items and display those items together).
• Put smaller items closer to the customer and larger items farther away.
• Avoid leaving cheese out of refrigeration for extended periods of time.
• Remember: It’s retail real estate -- go vertical, be thrifty with your horizontal space.
• Branding: Use store or repack labels but avoid showing scale price labels.
• Use color and shape breaks.
• Face all labels toward the customer in the same direction.
• Make it dynamic (coffin cases): Avoid putting everything in straight rows, use every little space to make it fit together like a puzzle.