Jungle Jim’s International Market in Fairfield, Ohio, is considered by many to be a theme park for foodies. Founded in 1974 by “Jungle” Jim Bonaminio, the store started as a small produce stand and has grown to more than 300,000 square feet, stocking upward of 160,000 SKUs of products, more than 60,000 of which are hard-to-find specialty products from around the world.

Jungle Jim’s is a feast for the eyes as well as the palate, with such features as an animal pond and an animatronic soup can.

The single-store operation boasts one of the largest wine collections in the United States, live seafood tanks and an in-store cooking school, as well as a 1,000-person Event Center.

This uniqueness extends to the store’s POS. “We have checkouts throughout the store,” says Vicki Lape, network administrator for Jungle Jim’s. “There are 57 checkouts throughout the store, including 38 at the front end, eight in the beer and wine department, five in the state liquor store, two in the gift shop, and checkouts at the garden center, deli and sandwich shop.”

And this setup is always changing, says Will Bradshaw, also a network administrator for the grocer. “The owner — we call him ‘Jungle’ — changes the format of the store all the time,” he says. “He doesn’t like to keep it stagnant. For example, we’re adding a vitamin and supplements department next week, and it will get two checkouts.”

With the vast number of products offered at Jungle Jim’s, promotions are numerous and varied. To accommodate such a unique operation, the grocer needed a POS system that was both robust and agile, not to mention easy to learn and easy to use. It found these attributes in Dayton, Ohio-based NCR’s Advanced Checkout Solution for Independent Retailers.

Quick Study
With all of the products and services Jungle Jim’s offers, store associates already have a lot to learn, so the grocer didn’t want to add a complex POS system on top of it. That’s why Jungle Jim’s found the ease of use of the ACS system so attractive. The grocer was able to customize the user interface to make it similar to the store’s previous system, so making the transition was a snap for most. Jungle Jim’s was even able to customize the screen’s colors so they remain visible in the occasional glare that comes from the newly installed skylights.

The ACS promotion functionality is what really drew the grocer to the system. “The system makes it very easy to create promotions,” says Lape. “For example, we have a department that features high-end gourmet kitchenware, and we’ll do regular chef demonstrations and cookbook signings. When we have those events, we usually run a promotion for just that department, just for the duration of the event, maybe something like 10 percent to 20 percent off kitchenware items. We do a lot of these ‘special time of day’ promotions. With our legacy system, they were tough to execute, and very time-consuming. With the ACS IR, each of these departments has a special group code, so there will be one code for all kitchenware items. You just select the code, schedule the promotion and that’s it.”

Jungle Jim’s can run such promotions because every item in the store can be scanned. This isn’t always easy when you’re dealing with international goods. “We have 60,000 SKUs of international products from all over the world, and many of them come in with unique bar codes, or sometimes none at all,” explains Bradshaw. “In the past, we needed special programs to handle these items, but now we can just create the bar codes ourselves. Everything is scanned at the register.”

The store’s “Mix and Match” wine program was a nightmare for cashiers as well as shoppers – those standing in line behind the wine customer, that is. “In Ohio, we can offer discounts for shoppers who buy a case of similar-size bottles of wine of different varieties,” says Lape. “We have 13,000 different kinds of wines. In the past, to run this promotion required the cashier to count the items and make sure there were 12, then scan each bottle and apply a line-item discount for each one. When this happened, the shoppers in line behind them would move to other lines.”

With the new system, a code is assigned to each size wine bottle, such as “750” for 750 milliliters. Then, when the 12th bottle is scanned, the discount is automatically applied. If a 13th bottle is scanned, the tally begins again. The system allows Jungle Jim’s to increase custom discount items while maintaining the maximum traffic capacity at checkout.

What’s more, these promotions are created in minutes using the system’s Windows-style wizards.

Incremental Benefits
The ACS has delivered incremental loss prevention benefits to boot. Jungle Jim’s uses Honeywell DVR equipment and cameras for in-store video surveillance, and NCR’s developers wrote a custom program that integrates the POS to the surveillance system, so that the transaction data can be viewed in parallel with the video feed coming from the corresponding register – in real time. “So, if our security personnel see a turkey being scanned while the transaction data for that register shows a Snickers bar being rung up, they can react to it instantly.”

The integrated system has even furnished evidence in a credit card fraud case. The police were holding the suspect, but all they had as proof was a receipt that showed the date and time of the transaction. Jungle Jim’s security staff queried the system and within minutes pulled up a digital video showing the suspect making the transaction, downloaded the video clip to a CD-ROM and handed it to the authorities as evidence. “That’s the beauty of the system,” says Lape. “It’s so adaptable, we’re always finding new ways to use it.”