POS Software Blog

Farm and Feed stores are relied upon heavily in the communities they serve.  While some serve primarily as supply houses for farmers, others provide a broader range of products and services for the community in which they operate.  This is typically driven by location and the proximity of the feed store to other types of retailers that serve each community.

At the Purina Mills Retail Solutions Expo in Nashville last week, the theme of the conference was "5 Pillars of Success."  Although this conference is focused specifically on farm and feed retailers, the theme of this particular seasonal event pertains to all small-to-medium merchants in most every vertical market.  The conference focused on the following 5 keys to success for the retailers in attendance:

5 Benefits of Automated POS Systems for Farm and Feed Stores:

A while back, I wrote a blog post about baby boomers retiring and their children taking over in the farm and feed store segment.  This factor seemed to be driving a great deal of business our way due to the sons and daughters injecting automation and technology into the business after many years of manual processes.  However, as the weeks go by and I continue to have conversations with farm and feed store owners and operators, I have learned that many factors come into play with this industry suddenly embracing new technologies.

In the past few months, I've heard these words more frequently than ever:  "my facility is a bit of a hybrid...what do I do for POS?”  There are a few reasons for this increase in frequency of this question. 

When I was in restaurant management, there was nothing more important to me than speed of service.  Several factors came into play when striving to be a leader in this area.  Some of these factors included operational issues such as employee training, the physical layout of the operation, procedures in place, attitude and proficiency and finally, technology.  In the 1990’s when my restaurant deployed a computerized point-of-sale (POS) system, speed of service was suddenly easier to achieve with each and every visitor.

As the baby boomers retire in the independent farm & feed store industry, the sons and daughters of these hard-working shopkeepers are charged with taking over the businesses that their parents built from scratch.