When customers stop by your market, they aren’t just looking for the freshest food and friendliest service — they’re also looking for great deals.
Promotions are a must-have ingredient for independent grocery store success. They boost your average basket sizes, increase turnover on slow-moving inventory, and make shoppers feel good about shopping with you.
However, crafting and executing an effective promotional strategy can be tough.
In this quick guide, we’ll share three simple steps to make it easier — plus seven creative promotion ideas you can try in your market.
Best Practices for Effective Promotions
First, let’s cover how to implement promotions.
The biggest mistake grocers make is relying on their cashiers to apply promotions manually at the checkout counter. This leads to longer lines, frustrated customers, and pricing errors that cut into your profits.
Instead, you need a market point of sale (POS) system with flexible, built-in promotion options. Let’s look at how to use this powerful tool in three steps.
1. Schedule Promotions in Your POS System
Modern market POS systems allow you to schedule promotions in advance, ensuring they apply automatically at checkout. This eliminates the need for manual price changes, reduces the risk of mistakes, and keeps checkout lines short.
Cloud-based POS software lets you change prices and set up promotions from anywhere — which is especially helpful if you need to move inventory quickly.
For example, if your stock records reveal a surplus of short-dated seafood products, you can set up a department-wide 20% off deal to increase turnover and prevent spoilage.
Pro tip: Your POS system’s sales reports are another valuable tool for promotion planning! They can help you spot near-expiry or overstocked products that are ideal for discounts.
2. Set Up Special Pricing Rules for Evergreen Promotions
Want steady sales? Create an evergreen promotion calendar that customers can count on.
For example, you might offer discounted rotisserie chickens for easy Sunday night dinners or Wine and Cheese Wednesdays with a bundle deal on artisan cheeses and bottles of wine.
Your POS system should make it a breeze to set up pricing rules and promotion triggers. This automation takes the burden off you and your cashiers to remember by automatically applying the discounts.
3. Use Role-Based Permissions for Security
Unauthorized discounts can lead to significant profit losses — which is why our next tip is to utilize your POS system’s role-based permission settings.
For example, you can require cashiers to get permission before manually discounting items. You can also set a promotional limit, preventing them from adding discounts over a certain amount.
These permission settings go hand in hand with automated promotions. Since legitimate discounts apply automatically, your employees shouldn’t have to worry about adjusting prices by hand.
7 Must-Try Promotions To Boost Your Market’s Sales
You’ve got the right tools — now it’s time to build your market’s promotional calendar. Here are seven promotion ideas to inspire you.
1. Morning Market Specials
Early mornings usually mean slow grocery store sales, but time-based discounts can boost foot traffic during your least busy hours.
Offer an attractive discount if customers shop with you before your peak sales times. For example, they might enjoy 10% off their entire basket or save 20% on bakery products if they purchase before 10 a.m. on weekdays.
This evergreen promotion encourages retirees, remote workers, and stay-at-home parents with flexible schedules to become loyal customers of your grocery store.
2. Deli Meal Deals
The deli is one of your grocery store’s most profitable departments — and the right promotional strategy can help you make even more money on your ready-to-eat food sales.
Encourage customers to turn their single item into a full meal with deli bundle deals. Here are a few examples:
- Family feast special: Offer family-sized entrees and sides for a special price when purchased together. They might enjoy a rotisserie chicken with mac and cheese, meatloaf with mashed potatoes, or lasagna with chopped salad.
- Lunch combo: Cater to busy professionals by offering convenient lunches at an affordable price. They can stop by for a made-to-order sandwich or wrap, single-serve bag of chips or cup of fruit, and a cold drink.
- Hosting package: Make holiday easy and affordable by bundling hosting essentials together for a special price. Offer classic appetizers like pinwheels and finger sandwiches, fruit and veggie trays, and gallon-sized teas and lemonades.
Along with increasing your average basket size and driving profitable deli sales, these promotions help customers see your store as a one-stop shop for pantry staples and delicious, ready-to-eat meals.
3. Senior Citizen or Military Discounts
Want to build goodwill in the community while building your loyal customer base? Offer a standing discount for senior citizens and veterans.
These discounts usually range from 5% to 15%. Add a button to your POS system dashboard to make applying this discount easy.
Don’t forget to train your staff to thank military members and veterans for their service — it adds a personal touch to the checkout process.
4. Recipe Kits
Did you accidentally order too much shredded cheese and too many tortillas? Transform them into taco night meal kits!
Recipe kits are a win-win for you and your customers. They get an easy meal idea — and you get to increase turnover on overstocked products. Here are a few more ideas to get you inspired:
- Summer grilling must-haves: Combine hamburgers, hot dogs, buns, chips, dips, soda, and beers to meet your customers’ summer grilling needs. Create signage or flyers with creative cookout tips!
- Soup season essentials: Help customers stay warm during cooler months with a delicious soup recipe. Combine the ingredients with freshly-baked bread from your bakery department for a hearty meal.
- Pasta night: Offer an easy dinner idea by combining artisan pasta, your bestselling private-label pasta sauce, and shredded parmesan from your cheese department. Add a fun twist by including a seasonal vegetable.
You can package the ingredients together as a single product, or display them on an endcap with special signage as a cross-selling strategy.
Related Read: Grocery Store Merchandising: How To Display Your Products for Maximum Sales
5. Member-Exclusive Promos
Traditional grocery store loyalty programs let members collect reward points and exchange them for discounts — but you can take this to the next level by offering weekly specials for the customers who sign up for your loyalty program.
This is a successful strategy for big-box supermarkets like Harris Teeter and Publix. To enjoy buy one, get one (BOGO) discounts on ice cream or special pricing on produce, customers have to be VIC or Club Publix members.
Taking advantage of this approach can help you compete with these big names and get more loyalty program signups.
6. Butcher’s Favorites
Want to highlight your protein expertise and help customers find their new favorite cut of steak? Consider highlighting a weekly butcher’s favorite.
This is an excellent way to increase turnover on underutilized cuts like the hanger steak or sirloin cap.
Keep in mind that customers might be unfamiliar with these steaks, so you’ll need to educate them. Create informational signage and social media posts to share recipes, cooking tips, and even wine pairing ideas to help shoppers turn your butcher’s specials into a delicious meal.
7. Subscribe and Save
When customers visit your market each week, they purchase the same items over and over again: a gallon of organic milk, a freshly-baked loaf of bread, their favorite granola mix, and a pound of grass-fed beef.
This repetitive behavior is why subscriptions are one of the most effective ways to build loyalty and create a more convenient shopping experience for your most loyal customers.
Offer a discount (5–10%) when customers subscribe to recurring pickup or delivery orders of their go-to grocery items. This ensures steady sales and helps you compete with supermarkets like Walmart and Amazon Fresh.
Note: Markt POS is one of the only grocery POS systems with built-in subscription features! Schedule your live demo with one of our experts to learn more about this unique promotion option.
Create Profitable Promotions With Markt POS
Ready to bring these ideas to life in your market? We can help.
Markt POS is an all-in-one POS solution designed for independent grocers, butcher shops, and other specialty markets. Along with tools to help you process transactions quickly and accurately, manage perishable and weight-based inventory, and learn more about your customers’ shopping behavior, our software includes powerful marketing tools, like:
- Flexible promotion options that eliminate the need for manual entry at the checkout counter
- Integrated mail and SMS marketing to help you stay in touch with your most valuable customers
- A built-in customer loyalty program to help you generate repeat sales
See these features in action by scheduling your personalized Markt POS demo today.
by Luke
by Joel
