More than micro markets: 5 solutions 365 Retail Markets offers beyond market and dining devices

Since its start in 2008, 365 Retail Markets has grown to become a global leader in unattended retail technology. From its versatile, space-saving Pico platform to its dynamic dining devices, 365 provides products propelling food service operators (FSOs) to powerful profits. However, its products are simply a single factor in what positions them as a premier partner for operators. 365’s ancillary services are the customizable solutions that enhance consumer engagement, operational efficiency and overall competitive advantage. Here are five of its significant services your micro market or dining operation should leverage:

1. Vending Management Software (VMS): Spend less, sell more, and control your operations. Within the past year, 365 Retail Markets has worked tirelessly to enhance its service offerings by cultivating a strong VMS platform for its customers. Vending management is a single-source solution to providing logistics services for vending, markets and OCS businesses – specifically those with multiple locations. 365 Retail Markets’ VMS solution is composed of:

Dynamic Routing Solutions: Eliminate unnecessary stops and only service locations that need it.
Precise Pre-kitting: Bring exact product to each location, helping you service more efficiently.
Merchandizing & Optimization: Increase point-of-sale (POS) sales by optimizing product planograms.
Actionable Reports: Choose from hundreds of detailed reports to gain insights on your operation.

2. Kitchen Management Solutions: Complete confidence in your kitchen. One of its newest services, 365’s kitchen management solutions are produced by chefs for chefs. This software simplifies recipe and menu management, nutritional data tracking, and allergen regulation compliance for foodservice operators. 365’s Kitchen Management solutions include:

Recipe & Menu Management: This feature handles your compliance and consistency, recipe building, costs, and allergens, all from within the same system. Operators can also enjoy the ease of a costing calculator and recipe data sheet.
Food Labeling: Keep your customers safe and informed with automatically generated, compliant recipe food labels. Choose from several layout options, add and remove information at the click of a button and create print-ready documents.
Stock & Ordering: This feature empowers operators to monitor kitchen stock, order from suppliers, keep track of price changes and record waste all one dashboard.
Digital Menus: Operators can produce interactive digital menus allowing customer filtering for allergens, dietary requirements and nutrition. Operators can also include pre-order and pre-pay options.
Meal Planning: This feature empowers operators to create meal plans based on required nutritional targets and costs for education and healthcare industries. With the meal planning option, operators can focus on purchase planning and create balanced meals while building within a budget.
Electronic Patient Meal Ordering: Intelligent tailored meal ordering that saves time and streamlines dining processes for hospitals and care homes. This service focuses on customer records and safety and recipe alterations.
Essentials: This is a light-touch product for those starting to digitize their allergens for compliance and consumer information, supporting legal compliance and nutritional information.

3. Consumer Engagement & Product Promotion Platforms: Engaging with consumers requires personalizing consumer interactions with each customer to meet their specific needs. 365 supports these efforts with its loyalty rewards, eGift cards and home screen product promotion features. Operators who are working to offload particular products or highlight new ones can even leverage 365’s promotional features to create product bundles at sale prices, incentives purchases and more.

4. Data Collection, Processing & Reporting: As the food service industry continues to re-invent itself and consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers look for new business growth opportunities, data insights become the crux of progress. 365 Retail Markets leverages data from the billions of transactions across all of its platforms to provide all levels of the supply chain the following benefits:

Optimized product mix for their entire operations.
Automated merchandising decisions leveraging machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Product selection-consumer preference matching.
Maximized consumer and client engagement.
Streamlined picking/warehousing operations.
Maximized revenue opportunity through brand partnerships.

5. Warehousing & Picking Solutions: Inventory is the lifeblood of an operator’s micro market, dining or office coffee service (OCS) business. Without it, there is nothing to stock shelves, fill cups, promote or sell. 365’s warehousing division, Lightspeed Automation, offers an expansive suite of solutions for warehousing and picking that includes:

FastTrack: A powerful, yet simple picking system that provides a cost-effective pick-to-light solution for vending, micro markets, pantry and OCS business lines. The system simplifies order fulfillment during the pre-kitting process by using LCD light signals to direct the activities of warehouse personnel.
Xpress: This mobile warehouse solution leverages a tablet mounted on any mobile cart or pallet jack. Vendors can pick multiple orders at one time, and the picker is directed through the warehouse on an efficient route. Our system also features a myriad of functions to support accuracy and focus, including product imagery displays and system-forced confirmation of the item before displaying the next. Additionally, Xpress reports changes to actual picked quantities to the provider.
Level: Empowers operators and vendors to consolidate information from all of their operation inputs to truly understand their warehouse inventory and purchasing needs. Level allows vendors to see on-hand product quantities at any time, cut ordering time based on system-suggested purchase quantities, automate receiving, verify products received against a purchase orders and leverage sales velocity data and current inventory levels to identify optimal purchasing.

365 Retail Markets understands that managing a micro market or dining operation is a highly involved and demanding effort. When managing the logistics is spread across a multitude of partners, that process becomes more complex. Therefore, 365 continues to offer more than micro market technology in order to streamline operator efficiencies at every stage of the FSO process.