By Jonathan Tan, VP Energy Services The AMS Group, Hillphoenix There are more than 152,000 convenience stores in the U.S. and about 80 percent of them sell gas. The food retail part of the business alone makes these stores energy intensive. Across the industry, food stores use an average of 51.5 kilowatt-hours per square foot – more than any other [...]
By Jonathan Tan, VP Energy Services The AMS Group, Hillphoenix Download Infographic Supermarkets are the most electricity-intensive commercial buildings, using an average of 51.5 kilowatt-hours per square foot per year at a cost of about $3.70 per square foot per year. In terms of operating budget, energy is the second largest expense for food retailers after labor. In fact, given [...]
By Jack Sjogren Hillphoenix Design Center Specialist Here’s a great story about the power of lighting and proper merchandising. Driscoll’s, one of the world’s largest distributors of fresh berries, wanted to amp up sales from its “Berry Patch” displays, which it creates for select partner retailers. Each Berry Patch features strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and blackberries merchandised in a refrigerated display [...]
By Henry Pellerin Hillphoenix Vice President of Marketing As traditional food-selling lines crisscross and blur — think grocerant — retailers increasingly seek insights from vendors with a view across multiple environments. At Hillphoenix, we have that broad view because our people are on the ground in traditional supermarkets, convenience stores and meal-oriented small-format operations. We transform what we learn in [...]
By Kim Camp, Learning Center Programs Manager and Justin Webster, Hillphoenix Design Center Specialist Grocery shoppers love the convenience and variety of ready-to-eat meals. In response, about 75% of food retailers plan to set up self-service bars by early next year, according to a Supermarket News survey published in April. But hot food program newbies have a few things to [...]
By Hannah Thompson Educator & Trainer for ANCO Fine Cheese Looks like the word “artisan” has been hijacked! Subway sandwich shops now offer artisan sandwiches, and Domino’s offers artisan pizza. What does “artisan” really mean? It’s meant to refer to foods that are hand-crafted in smaller batches and made with high-quality ingredients, such as ice cream, cheese and bacon. The [...]
By Mark DiDomenico Datassential, Inc. Today’s consumer is much more engaged with the foods and beverages they consume. Subsequently, they are driving faster adoption of trends. Nowhere is this more evident than in the restaurant channel, where operators are challenged with developing new and enticing menu options for their patrons’ ever evolving tastes. Those trends are also providing great challenges [...]
Remember Gourmet magazine? Everything imported; if it wasn’t French or Italian, it pretended to be. Today the magazine – as well as that kind of thinking – have gone the way of Jackie Kennedy’s pillbox hat. Since Alice Walker opened Chez Pannise in Berkeley in 1971, restaurants have moved away from the Gourmet idea of fine dining – toward the [...]
By Jack Sjogren Hillphoenix Design Center Specialist Using proper lighting inside and around closed-door refrigerated cases turns glass-fronted coolers into gallery-worthy display spaces. That increases the value of your investment in high-visibility cases, such as the Clarity line from Hillphoenix. And it ensures your closed cases not only offer energy savings and product longevity, but also show merchandise at its [...]
Last month, we discussed the lack of effective performance baselines for natural refrigeration systems and how that makes it difficult for utilities to provide natural refrigeration incentives. In this article, we’ll talk about the second challenge faced by end users and utilities: the lack of good modeling software for natural refrigeration systems. When seeking incentives from utilities for natural refrigeration, [...]