SUPERMARKET SYSTEMS AND EQUIPMENT
Take control of the consumer experience
Advances in facility controls help keep food fresher and consumers safe and engaged as Reggie O’Donoghue, director electronics product management, Emerson’s Commercial and Residential Solutions, explains.
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he role of facility controls in the food retail and foodservice sectors has expanded greatly in recent years. Once thought of as primarily a means to provide energy management, controls technologies have rapidly evolved to provide greater degrees of supervision of temperature throughout the cold chain, and much tighter management of facility conditions that contribute to customer comfort and maintaining food quality. Among the many drivers behind this evolution, achieving consumer mind- and wallet-share are at the top of this list. In an environment where grocery stores and restaurants are continually vying for customer attention, retailers are finding it more challenging to attract customers — keep them coming back.
With ever-expanding shopping and dining options from which to choose, more consumers are citing the in-store experience itself — not merely the practical purpose of eating or shopping — as a large part of what draws them into stores. This preference has led to the concept of experiential retail, a merging of entertainment and traditional shopping to offer consumers more engaging experiences. What all this means to retailers is that providing an inviting, comfortable and safe environment is now an operational imperative — as important as maintaining productivity and profitability alike. Advanced facility management and supervisory controls are essential tools to help any retailer attempting to achieve these diverse objectives.
Supermarkets are among the most energy-intensive types of all commercial buildings, with HVAC and refrigeration systems consuming high levels of energy around the clock.
42 April 2018
While controls have long been used to optimize energy efficiencies in food retail, in today’s competitive landscape this is as important as ever. Even the slightest reductions in energy consumption may have a direct impact on profit margins, as well as potentially qualify for available utility incentives.
But controlling energy alone is no longer enough. Controls in today’s facilities require the flexibility to keep customers interested, engaged and returning — through both the experience and the goods sold. Food safety is both a critical element of a brand’s experience and a prerequisite for consumer trust.
The challenge of food safety impacts a broader range of retailers than ever before. One common scenario in the experiential retail playbook is to offer freshly prepared foods to entice customers. For retailers with no experience in this arena, the foray into the food business (even on smaller scales) can be especially challenging.
At the same time, more commercial buildings are playing host to a variety of owned, leased or operated food outlets for the convenience of building occupants and neighboring patrons.
All told, the explosion of food offerings in both traditional and non-traditional spaces is driving a greater need for quality control and safety measures.
But as we are frequently reminded, food safety is a high- stakes game where one mistake can potentially create immediate and lasting damage to a brand’s reputation and profitability.
The good news is that today, the same types of control systems used to optimize energy have been improved upon to address emerging challenges. By employing the latest controls technologies, facility managers can leverage the
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