How Hot Food Is Helping Grocery Stores Compete With Restaurants
On May 20th, we held our inaugural Retail Grocery and Market Summit to discuss the latest industry trends, showcase exciting new product updates, and create a platform for our independent market customers to share their expertise with the community.
Led by Markt POS founder Luke Henry, our panel covered hot-button topics, including:
- How small grocers are using AI to save time and get ahead
- How your point of sale (POS) system can lay the groundwork for omnichannel operations
- Underused USDA programs for SNAP customers
…and much more.
Here are the key takeaways and learnings from the summit.
1. There’s No One-Size-Fits-All Solution for Small Grocery — but AI Is Driving Self-Service Innovation
Yes, Markt POS continuously makes improvements — but realistically, there will always be unique problems POS software won’t solve out of the box. Every store faces hyperlocal challenges, whether it’s the weather, the way a particular vendor writes an invoice, or how an accountant wants books organized.
Luckily, rapid improvements to AI make it easier for small market owners to develop custom apps. Where some software providers balk at this evolution, we find these changes exciting. In addition to innovating with AI-powered tools ourselves, we’re committed to ensuring our POS platform is both flexible and reliable enough to work with custom tools.
Nishant Patel, owner of Future Foods in Maine, put it best when he said, “There’s no software in the world that can solve a unique problem just for your store.”
One of the biggest takeaways from our retail summit is that small market owners are eager to solve their own challenges — and it’s vital for us to create flexible tools and open APIs that help you achieve your goals.
How Real Store Owners Use APIs To Create Local Solutions
Nishant started things off by demonstrating how connected POS software like Markt POS helps him find solutions to specific local challenges. In the Northeast, the weather is a major factor affecting daily sales — a problem that the POS wasn’t equipped to handle natively.
Nishant used Markt POS’ open API to create a custom dashboard to correlate store sales with local weather. The dashboard shows high and low temperatures and changes over time in relation to sales volume. This data helps Nishant audit his business more effectively and proactively reach out to customers and employees.
Another major area where store owners use custom applications is invoicing and accounting.
Michael Kelley, owner of Tree Bird Market in Oregon, explained that, while he needed exact product information updated into his POS system, that level of detail caused headaches when updating QuickBooks for his accountant.
Michael solved this problem by building a tool on top of Markt POS to export department-level financial data to QuickBooks. He was even able to set up vendor-specific rules to identify items like shipment charges or other line items that aren’t always printed consistently between suppliers. It’s helped him significantly speed up his daily sales accounting, too.
How AI Is Empowering Small Food Markets
In some cases, these custom features were created by seasoned coders. In many others, they were created by store owners with no background in tech. AI tools allow small business owners to “vibe code” by simply using large language models (LLMs) like Claude and ChatGPT to describe what they need, and let it handle the technical coding aspects.
As these systems get more sophisticated, we expect grocers to take advantage of them for things like:
- Custom invoicing rules and imports for specialty vendors
- Wholesale cost monitoring and price changes
- Custom dashboards for sales predictions
- Agents to track product margin automatically
While there is a learning curve, these AI-powered tools have massive potential to free up time and energy for small market owners.
2. The Future of Markt POS: A Focus on Grocery-Specific Features and Putting You in the Driver’s Seat
After showcasing the AI-driven and customized programs our customers are using, Joel Henry, head of product at Markt POS, detailed some of the exciting new things on the horizon for our grocery POS system.
As our customers start to develop sophisticated tools on their own, we remain dedicated to incorporating industry-specific features and responding to user feedback to improve the overall experience for both store staff and their customers.
Here are the biggest things Markt POS users should look out for in 2026.
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Coming Soon to Markt POS |
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Integrated Network CAS Scales |
Instantly push updates from your back office to your network-connected CAS scale and label printers. We support labels with detailed ingredient and nutrition information for prepared foods, too. |
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OCR Invoice Importing |
Speed up invoicing, especially with paper invoices, with new-and-improved OCR PO scanning. Our system uses AI and optical character recognition (OCR) to quickly scan and digitize paper and PDF invoices. |
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Margin-Based Pricing |
Set product pricing based on a target margin automatically for individual items, product groups, or by department. Ensuring you don’t need to manage profits on a SKU by SKU basis. |
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Penny Rounding |
Round your transactions up or down to the nearest five cents with built-in penny rounding. |
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Bulk SMS Marketing |
Connect with customers with our bulk text message marketing. Send messages to all of your customers or use customer groups for personalized marketing, like lunch deals to food counter customers or discounts on staples for bulk shoppers. |
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Simplified Customer Signup |
Sign up customers for your loyalty program using only their phone number right at the register. You asked, we listened — the whole customer creation process is easier. |
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Advanced Refunds |
Refund directly to a transaction by pulling up an old transaction and selecting the exact product. You can also leave detailed refund notes to monitor any unusual refund activity or spot trends (e.g., customers are consistently unhappy with a particular product). |
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Expanded API Access |
Build your own apps and tools with more advanced API access. Moving forward, Markt POS will make it easier to access the data on your POS system for any use case. |
Want to see more details about what Markt POS has in store? Check out the full on-demand recording!
3. Underused USDA Programs Can Boost Margins and Help Your Community
Independent grocery stores have the potential to connect with their communities and local neighborhoods in a way that big chains can’t. Sadly, many small grocers feel like they don’t have the resources to make a big impact.
Ted Mason, retail technology consultant at the National Grocers Association Foundation, shared information about “Double Up Food Bucks” and “Produce Prescriptions” (GusNIP). These USDA-supported programs incentivize SNAP customers to buy more fresh fruits and vegetables while reimbursing participating retailers.
While eligibility for these programs varies state by state, many state legislators are working to expand access. In some cases, these programs have been implemented directly into the point of sale. When a customer buys an eligible item, your POS system instantly deducts the discount from the order, then generates reports for reimbursement.
Participating in GusNIP programs not only benefits customers, who get more affordable access to fresh produce, but it also benefits your business by boosting sales of perishable products.
Almost every state in the country has some variety of these programs, with these notable exceptions:
- Idaho
- Maine
- North Dakota
- Wyoming
Interested in participating in one of these programs? Here’s what you need to do:
- Determine whether your POS system supports automated “Double Up” transactions or can create a report.
- Contact the National Grocers Association Foundation to identify possible funding organizations in your area.
- Let funding organizations know your store can support automated incentive transactions (or compliant reports) and is interested in participating.
4. Small Grocers Still Thrive on Authenticity and Customer-Centric Strategies
At the Retail Grocer and Market Summit, we also talked with Ivan Aguilar from Pantera Market in Idaho about current trends and challenges, and what strategies they’ve used to face them head-on.
As prices go up and budgets tighten, many small grocers worry about having to sacrifice what makes them special to stay competitive.
The consensus among Ivan and our other panelists is that authenticity and customer-centric strategies are the best ways for smaller markets to compete. In other words, focusing on creating a unique store culture with great customer service is still the main driver of visits to local stores, even when prices at chains are the same or better.
Supplier costs have been a hot-button issue this year. In many cases, small market owners are trying their best not to pass on cost increases to their customers — but store owners like Ivan note that it’s a balancing act that takes good data and financial discipline.
Solid store data gives businesses an honest view of how long they can hold out on price increases, where cost changes are having the biggest impact, and how pricing changes affect the overall business.
Not angering customers is important, but you need to know when failing to raise prices puts the business at risk.
5. Grocery Store Technology Requires a Single Source of Truth To Evolve
Until recently, many point of sale technologies weren’t built to last. For modern grocers, technology is at the core of their business. It’s no longer feasible to keep switching software every few years.
The biggest advances in grocery store growth and productivity are omnichannel — but what does that mean for the average independent grocer or food market owner?
In our last session of the day, we focused on the importance of using your POS system as a platform instead of a tool — a single source of truth for accurate inventory, transaction, customer, and all other data at the heart of your business.
This is why POS providers like Markt POS are doubling down on the vision to create a truly omnichannel solution for grocers. By focusing on modernizing your back office, you can lay groundwork that future-proofs your business.
The tools that small grocers are most excited about — electronic shelf labels (ESLs), a modern e-commerce store, self-updating deli scales, or better sales forecasting tools — simply won’t work without having a single, accurate data source to power them.
Watch the Full Summit for More Insights
So much is changing in grocery — but the core of what makes an independent food market special stays the same. Even as prices fluctuate and people’s shopping habits shift, providing a unique and authentic experience is ultimately what will drive success.
But let’s not sugarcoat things. Staying competitive requires small businesses to embrace new technologies and new ways of thinking — and while there might be a bit of a learning curve, updating those foundational aspects of our stores sets the stage for an exciting tomorrow.
Want to take a deeper dive? Check out our full on-demand session recording today.
Luke has been in the grocery industry for 15 years. Starting out as a POS technician, he worked his way up to VP. Luke has seen, adopted, and even contributed to significant technological advancements, such as moving from server-based systems to cloud solutions with Markt POS and the AI revolution transforming store operations. Luke is our resident expert for all things grocery store and point of sale technology. “Store owners spend too much time on paperwork instead of building their business. After helping my best friend's father run his grocery store, I made it my mission to give hardworking store owners better tools to succeed.”