Operations
As of October 2012, there are 52 PAK'nSAVE stores across New Zealand. Stores are often located in suburban areas, and are usually open until at least 10 pm (although some notable exceptions include Pukekohe, which closes at 9 pm).
The name probably originates from the cost-saving practice of requiring that customers pack their own groceries, with checkout operators simply placing the products purchased back into a second trolley. Pak'n Save provides the cardboard boxes used for shipping products to the store, or plastic supermarket bags can be purchased at the checkout for 10 cents. Customers are encouraged to purchase longer-lasting bags or to bring their own.
The stores are laid out as supermarket aisles, but with minimalistic design, and often perpendicular to the checkout lanes rather than the traditional parallel found in other New Zealand supermarkets and retailers. Extra products that are not on shelves are stacked above the shelves on the pallets they were delivered in. meaning that the floor space can be used for retail and storage. The stores are supplied daily from their co-operative distributor Foodstuffs.
PAK'nSAVE stores often buys stock in bulk. This process means that stores don't offer a wide variety of brands and pack sizes as full-service supermarkets, with products often restricted to market leaders and store brands. A 2009 Consumer magazine survey noticed the lack of range especially in the pet food and toilet paper categories.
Mosts stores have self checkout and some have self scanning facilities. Self-checkout facilities are small checkout for express (15 items or less) purchases, where customers scan and bag their own groceries, with several self-checkouts monitored over by a single staff member for assistance and to clear any restricted transactions (e.g. alcohol). Self-scanning facilities (Shop n' Go) are where a pre-registered customer scans each item with a handheld scanner as they put them in their trolley. This reduces waiting time at the checkout, with most customers only requiring to pay for the groceries, although random rescans do take place. All stores have conventional checkout operator scanning is also available.
Read more about this topic: Pak'nSave
Famous quotes containing the word operations:
“There is a patent office at the seat of government of the universe, whose managers are as much interested in the dispersion of seeds as anybody at Washington can be, and their operations are infinitely more extensive and regular.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“You can’t have operations without screams. Pain and the knife—they’re inseparable.”
—Jean Scott Rogers. Robert Day. Mr. Blount (Frank Pettingell)