When it comes to produce labor, there are always two opposite forces at work.
The first force comes from produce managers, who strive to get as many hours as they can to best operate and manage their departments. The second (and more dominant) force comes from upper management — people such as store managers or district managers.
Their ongoing mantra is, “Cut hours wherever possible. Labor is the single most controllable expense.”
Of course, they’re correct. In the grocery business, you can’t do much about the cost of goods, the rent, utilities or a thousand other line items. But labor? That’s the one expense that is constantly being monitored. I overhear it while shopping. A manager will tell a clerk, “Hey, punch out. Can’t have any overtime.”
Over the years, many things have happened in the produce aisle that have helped soften labor constraints: Head lettuce is source-wrapped, asparagus is prebanded, clamshell-packed berries and cherry tomatoes are the norm — just a few examples of items that used to require substantial in-store prep and, with it, added labor hours.
The produce manager’s reaction when these things debuted was: “Great! Now I can use those saved prep hours to apply to better maintaining the department and really make things shine!” This, of course, never happened, as the aforementioned opposing forces merely deducted the labor dollars up front and told the produce managers they had to do more with fewer hours.
In this ongoing battle of attaining or deducting labor hours in the produce department, one question often goes unasked: How will this affect produce department standards?
Will the allotted hours be enough for training? For proper ordering, rotation, merchandising, signing, cleaning, prep and handling? For maintaining good stock conditions?
As we delve ever deeper into peak summer season and the elevated fresh produce volume associated, are the higher-ups in management even aware of what it takes to set up and maintain a produce department in good shape for their customers?
I suspect not as much as we’d all like to think.
Consider what it takes to get a produce department ready for a store opening on any given day. Besides setting the wet rack, which is always the biggest first chore of the day, there remain summer staples, such as fresh corn for one example. Corn displays require a fresh set every morning, and because the item is messy to handle and dries out easily, corn displays require frequent straightening, culling, restocking, rotation, light trimming and overwrapping aged stock.
Other high-labor summer areas include stone fruit, grapes, melons, cut fruit and (especially) cherries. Cherries are another early-set, high-attention and potentially high-shrink category that requires frequent and ongoing labor throughout the day.
All these areas and more require trained hands to manage, and that means as many labor dollars and hours as a store can spare. The investment of wisely applied, maximum labor hours in a produce schedule can’t be overstated. A well-managed produce department translates into maximizing sales.
In a department that provides the store with the highest gross profit, it only makes sense to ensure that produce is provided with every possible advantage with labor, as this helps the bottom line of a store more than any other department.
Managing a produce department is never easy. Managing it during the trying summer months is even harder when trying to squeeze in ongoing training — especially considering that with new faces filling in to help cover vacations, the heaviest volume of the year in produce is often managed by those with the least experience.
We used to preach this to produce managers, but especially during the summer: “Untrained people throw money away.”
Produce summer labor is a vital area to monitor each day, each week. You can’t afford to shortchange or overlook the importance of the produce department if you are truly committed to overall store success.
Armand Lobato’s more than 50 years of experience in the produce business span a range of foodservice and retail positions. He has written a weekly retail column for two decades.
