UK Supermarket retailer pressure

Hello there,

I know the UK supermarket marketplace is always a pressured environment but has anyone noticed the extreme pressures that retailers are putting on their internal and external refrigeration teams at the moment?

It is almost as if when one retailer loses market share, they need to blame something rather than their own strategies and lack of staff to fill shelves of chilled / ambient products and the pressured store managers / retailers blame the refrigeration systems when there is a breakdown!

It's not as if they ever empty cabinets even when are are at a high temperature anyway!

:rolleyes:

How long before the bubble bursts ?

Contract prices don't allow for enough engineers. Maintenance budgets are the first to be cut.
The Customer wants 24hr cover, but whenever you want cases emptying, it's always "you'll have to come back, out of hours" :(

Forget your spanners and gauges, get the Magic Wand out of your tool bag, it's the only thing that will drag us back.

Its just the same on instal, they cut the programmes but want everything yesterday. For instance on Sunday comming ive got to commission 9 cases,2 coldrooms and a pack and have it all handed over by 6 oclock Monday morning. I will be lucky to get the first cases by about 2 oclock by the time the old cases have been ripped out and the new ones put in. In an ideal world if things go ok it is achievable but if there are any problems it can be a major ball ache. When I say achievable this dosent nesseseraly mean they are fully commissioned to my satisfaction but on such a tight timescale you have no choice but to hand over and then carry on the commissioning when the cases are bieng filled. And when problems arise all you get is "its a brand new case why is it off". If you got the time like we used to have, like three days hand over,you can bottom out any minor issues before the cases are filled thus causing minimal disruption to sales etc. It is so demoralising after you have done a 14 shift and you are the last one on site and things have gone to **** and you are getting it from all sides you just feel like walking away. This could all be a thing of the past if we just had a little more time but I doubt things will ever go back to the way thay were. Its just a case of get them filled and get them trading and hope for the best.