Poxons Butchers may be a traditional, 50-year-old family business, but it is ahead of the field when it comes to the latest retail technology.
The Wolverhampton-based shop is run by Nigel Poxon, the son of the founder, who prides himself on the quality of his products. Poxons is a member of the Q Guild and supplies only British meat, including the renowned Scots Beef from the Duke of Buccleuch’s Estate. It also has a small manufacturing plant producing pork pies, sausages and bakery items.
Mr Poxon has just installed four M series counter scales, together with receipt and label printers and bar code scanners, linked to a back office computer via MX 050 software. “I had quotes from Tec and Bizerba, but we’ve always used Avery Berkel so I decided to stick with them,” he says.
Before taking his old machines away, Avery Berkel transferred the information to the new machines so that the shop would be up and running straight away. Now, the company is helping Mr Poxon use the scales’ capabilities to develop a customised system for his business and provide a better service for his customers.
The most recent innovation is to provide use by dates, storage information and cooking instructions for each piece of meat on the customer receipt. Based on a pre-programmed equation, the scales automatically calculate the rare, medium and well-done cooking times according to the type and weight of meat being sold, and print out oven temperatures and times on the customer receipt. The next stage, currently under development, will provide recipe suggestions as well.
A bovine traceability system is also going live shortly. As the carcasses come in, a bar code will be created for each individual side of beef. When the primals are cut, staff will scan this bar code and print out labels for each tray put on the display counter. Then, when the meat is sold, they simply have to scan the tray label and all the required traceability details will be transferred onto the customer receipt.
Details of each body of beef will also be recorded by the back office system which will be able to tell them, at any time, how much of it they have sold and what percentage they are going to make.
“There is just such a lot that these scales can do that we’re growing our system as we go along,” says Mr Poxon. “And we’re getting so much help from Avery Berkel – the after-sales support has been brilliant.”