I wanted to make some room for some new bars at my store the other day, so I started to comb through some data. Analyzing velocity and sales data isn’t easy for a lot of us who own stores. While Square is a great POS, their reporting and data is not designed to help stores identify trends. 

So I exported some data and took a look at one of our brands, in particular, CLIF BARS.

Now sometimes I don’t like to admit how disorganized we can be, but grocery stores are a lot to manage – right? So, much to my surprise, I discovered that we carried 36 varieties of CLIF BARS at one time or another over the last 12 months. Yes, 36! Blueberry Crips, Caramel Macchiato, Apricot, Cookies & Cream – the list goes on and on. 

And it turns out, 70% of my sales came from 15 flavors.

As I thought about that, it occurred to me that even 10 flavors will likely generate the same amount of revenue. And allow us to bring in more local & emerging brands.

So we decided to bring on four more bar brands more consistently, Yes Bar, Owl Bar, Garuka Bar & Battenkill Bars.

These small moves take time but are well worth it. We’ve now freed up space to make room for more emerging brands, and given our consumers access to better-made and better-for-you products.

Want help with some category analysis? If so, feel free to email me and we’ll help you analyze your data.