Highland Country Market is a vertically integrated grocery retailer in Stoney Creek, Ontario that specializes in meats, but which carries a wide selection of produce, deli, and bakery items as well. Highland Country Market is the retail aspect of its parent company, Highland Packers, Ltd. Highland owns and processes its own meats, from the livestock all the way to the final retail product. We caught up with accountant Margaret Escanilla and customer service manager Roxanne Walker who took time from their busy schedules to tell us about how Highland Country Market is using Catapult to manage its retail operation.

Tell us about the history of Highland Country Market.

Highland : In 1958 the DeJonge family opened a small butcher shop in Stoney Creek with just a couple of employees. The business grew gradually over the years into the full-fledged meat processing facility that is known today as Highland Packers, Ltd. There are approximately 80 employees in all, and nearly 30 of those work solely in the retail part of the business, which covers about 10,000 square feet.

What sort of clientele does Highland Country Market serve?

Highland : Our deli, bakery, and produce sections are relatively new to the shop, and are gradually catching the interests of our regular customers. But the meat products are still the primary reason people shop here. We service a range of weekly walk-in customers who come from anywhere between Niagara Falls and Scarborough. And we continue to do a good deal of wholesale business, primarily with regional butcher shops and restaurants. We issue Customer ID cards that we scan at the point of sale, and which allow us to track our customers' shopping habits and purchasing history with accuracy and ease.

How is Catapult helping Highland Country Market manage its operations?

Highland : We use Catapult's range of reports to give us a detailed look at how our store is performing from day to day, week to week, and month to month. The data generated in these reports provides a level of control that is absolute necessary to survive in today's business world. The Optimized Cashier report is our bible. With three registers and a backroom workstation/server, there would be no other way to keep track of our cashier activity in such a busy environment. Every night we run a Net Sales and Net Profit report, which keeps us on the pulse of our inventory movement. At the end of each week we run Weekly Net Sales, Optimized Cashier, and Optimized Sales Activity reports. It's Catapult's ability to give us this accurate picture of what's going on in the store that let's us make better choices across the board. From inventory control to employee staffing, Catapult is helping us make more intelligent business decisions here at Highland Country Market.

Tell us about Catapult's integration into your retail environment?

Highland : Having been in the retail business over fifteen years, I can say that Catapult is easier to understand than any other retail technology I've been exposed to. The naming conventions in the program make perfect sense, so there's never any time wasted wondering what certain terms mean. I often spend time exploring aspects of the system to learn it more indepthly. Catapult's intuitive design makes it easy for me to dig around and teach myself new features without ever becoming lost or confused. It's a very comfortable and self-explanatory system.