Key Food Opts for ADC’s InterScale

Key Food Stores Co-Operative Inc. is now implementing Applied Data Corp.'s InterScale Scales Manager software. Staten Island, N.Y.-based Key Food selected the solution after launching a strategic project to achieve PLU item number standardization across its membership.

"As a co-operative, each of our stores assigned different PLU item numbers across all fresh commodities,” explained Aliceann Conoshenti, Key Food's IT director. "Our goal is to provide accurate gross-profit reporting to our members. To accomplish this required standardization of PLUs and UPCs [bar code numbers] across meat, seafood, deli, dairy, produce and bakery departments. We needed a centralized software solution with the ability to communicate across all fresh departments, which is what led us to InterScale."

InterScale Benefits

Using InterScale, Key Food stores can manage all data for bar code labeling scales, including change batch creation and management, performing network tests, reloading scales with item price and food safety information, and pulling back scale data for comparison reporting across an individual store or chain of stores. The software also has the ability to communicate to a variety of bar code labeling scales from different manufacturers, including some models that are 10 to 15 years old.

"Our stores responded very favorably to ADC's InterScale because of ADC’s extensive list of compliant scales -- more than any other scale software company, which made this large project a lot easier for our stores," said Key Food Director of Merchandising Frank Gambarella.

"With InterScale, we were able to provide the ability to automate pricing updates to all scales, which eliminated the manual efforts that our stores had to manage previously," added Conoshenti. "Our stores have visibility of all scale data. The ease of use of InterScale allows us to update and control the data at scale level from a central location, across all of our stores."

When the InterScale implementation is completed, Key Food plans to look into ADC's other fresh item management solutions.

InterScale is one of three software systems comprising InterStore, Tampa, Fla.-based ADC's integrated fresh item management software suite. The other two systems are the NutriGen Recipe Manager, which derives the true cost of recipes, including packaging and labor, in addition to managing all of the allergen and nutritional facts through their recipes for legally compliant labeling, and the P-Cubed Production Manager, which automates, manages and tracks shrink, inventory and production in supermarkets' fresh departments.

Key Food was founded in Brooklyn in 1937 and has since grown to more than 149 supermarkets in all five New York City boroughs, New York's Long Island, upstate New York, and New Jersey and Pennsylvania.