Location: Antrim, County Antrim
EDGEPoS Solutions: EDGEPoS
Results: Better efficiency, time management and award winning success
Maxol A26 Tannaghmore Services’ win for Best Northern Ireland Forecourt over 4 million litres at the recent Forecourt Trader Awards , is testament to the service station’s high standards in retail innovation, and providing customers with the very best forecourt and in-store experience.
As well as a fresh and reinvigorated look on the forecourt, A26 Tannaghmore is one of the first Maxol sites to offer Premium fuel which will provide customers with a more environmentally friendly fuel choice and fewer pollutants.
In-store there is a new look and feel and an extended offer in the food-to-go range. The new SPAR Daily Deli provides a range of hot and cold food options, including fresh sandwiches, wedges, chicken from the self-service chicken bar and vegetarian options.
Paul Rogan, General Manager , has retail in his blood, saying “I was behind the till serving at my family-owned convenience store from the age of ten. After finishing University, I was brought back into the family business through family sickness to help, and I quickly realised that my passion for retail had never gone.”
“After meeting with Aramark and discussing the opportunity in A26 Tannaghmore Services, I knew it was a great opportunity and the concept was the future of motorway services in Northern Ireland. I joined the business in 2017 and was promoted to General Manager in 2019.”
“After COVID-19 struck in March 2020, we noticed a huge switch in our customer shopping trends. Instead of looking for impulse buys and small basket spends, we suddenly had large amounts of customers who were looking for a bigger choice of grocery range. With great planning and a new concept, we doubled the grocery range that we offer in-store and included a wider choice of dinner options for our customers. Our customers are always complementing the increased choice, and this has resulted in larger basket spends and increased footfall. We went from selling around 150 sandwiches to over 400 per week, and sales are up between £6k to £7k per week from 2020 to 2021. This is without the usual tourist trade and coaches of people that we were used to welcoming pre COVID.”
“The success is down to Maxol, SPAR and Aramark pulling together, where we were encouraged to put an idea forward and everything was looked at.”
EDGEPoS was installed into A26 Tannaghmore Services in November 2020, and the store hasn’t looked back since.
EPOS systems are at the heart of industry innovation. When considering such a system for any site, forecourt retailers should look at operational efficiency, what security and safeguards a system brings to a store, and business development.
In other words, how can the technology help grow your business?
Among the main features are fuel integration, advanced age checking, suggested ordering and sales-based ordering, cash control, intelligent basket analysis, fuel bunkering, prepay options, no means to pay and drive-offs reported at till, and OPT integration.
EDGEPoS integrates all aspects of the convenience and fuel business, ensuring full control and security across areas such as self-populating price lookups (PLUs), scheduled reports, advanced age-check, fuel, PayPoint and electronic funds transfer (EFT) integration, audit trails, in-store coupons and upselling trigger messages.
Paul tells us, “I find EDGEPoS so much easier to use than our previous system. I had to constantly fix price changes and was always having problems with invoices being received. We carry out monthly stocktakes in store. Often when I went to do the end of month figures, the same invoice had come down up to five times – this played havoc with our stock figures and it took days for the EPOS provider to fix it for us.”
“One big difference is the support levels that we receive from Henderson Technology. Most times, our queries are resolved instantly or on the same day.”
Paul continues, “I used to spend a full day doing promotion changeovers on the old system, and now this is done within one hour. I basically have one extra day in the week now from this alone.”
“Everything is so easy on EDGEPoS, for example deals. If I need to make a change or add a deal, it’s so easy to use and instantly applied to the till. We’re planning to move to sales based suggested ordering as the next step in store operational efficiency.”
“There are a fantastic variety of reports on EDGEPoS also. The 13 weeks comparison report is invaluable – if we try something new, we are able to see how this has performed and review if this is a product we need to keep on our shelves.”
“And the No Means to Pay reporting on the till is a really easy process. On the old system when we needed to layaway a sale, it threw the figures out and our wet stock management was never accurate. Now when a customer returns to pay for their fuel, we simply scan the receipt that EDGEPoS generated, and the customer pays – it is absolutely brilliant.”
Paul concludes, “All in all, EDGEPoS is a far superior system that has been key to us growing and adapting our business over the past 12 months. It gives us the functionality and control in store to save time every day and free up staff for other operations. I have reaped the benefits of the system in my working week also. The training provided was first class and the ongoing support is amazing.”
Henderson Technology works hard to provide our Retailers with the most innovative features and solutions. We are proud to be recognised by industry leading organisations for EDGEPoS EPOS Software.