After 12 years in the highly competitive convenience store industry, Pravin Patel and his wife Usha understand the importance of a good point-of-sale system. Unsatisfied with the POS system they had at their Cannon Street East location in Hamilton, Ontario, they decided to look for something new. In the winter months of 1999, they looked to Catapult to help deal with the management of their new Macy's Food Mart store in suburban Dundas, Ontario.

Their newly constructed 4,000-square-foot convenience store also houses a pizza oven and a deli, where they serve a variety of sandwiches and subs. Encouraged by the success of the Dundas store, Macy's installed Catapult in their Hamilton location. ECRS caught up with Pravin to discuss Catapult, and the kind of positive impact that it has had on his business.

Hand Held Control : The Apex II Hand-Held Terminal

"We have thousands of inventory items, and their prices fluctuate constantly. The Apex Hand Held Terminal makes the difficult and costly task of taking inventory faster and easier. Catapult interfaces directly to the hand-held unit, providing worksheets for price changes, physical inventory, receiving, and building sales promotions. Using Catapult's label printing option, I can create all sorts of shelf labels with prices and bar codes. The Apex device has a scanner on it, so I just scan the shelf label under the item.

Because jobs like these are easier to do, I tend to do them more often. I take inventory of easily stolen items (like tobacco) as often as possible. I don't seem to be doing as much work, and I feel like I have a lot more control of my store."

Inventory Control : Alternate Identification

Through Catapult's unique Alternate ID feature, multiple-unit packages of inventory items are easily tracked to a base unit item. Whether it's a single, 6-pack, 12-pack, or a case of 24, Catapult helps to control the inventory : "If I order Coke by the case of 24, but break that case open to sell it by the single can, Catapult tracks all of the cans no matter how I sell them. That way I don't have to keep two separate inventories of the same item in order to sell it both ways. Cigarettes are sold the same way : I order them by the carton, and sell them by both the carton and the single pack. Catapult handles that really well."

Marketing Macy's : Customer Cards

"Catapult's Customer Tracking has a sales history feature which allows me to go back and see what my customers are buying. The customer cards work with the customer tracking system really well. I had key-tags made so that customers could put them on their key chains. It takes only a second to scan the customer's card, and any customer incentives and discounts are automatically applied to the transaction. This also works great for employee discounts."

Catapult Takes Two : The Cannon Street Store

In September 2000, Pravin and his wife decided to install Catapult at their Cannon Street store. "On Cannon Street, we had a POS system that wasn't very user-friendly : the database wasn't self-maintaining like Catapult; it wasn't very reliable; and it was impossible to get technical support. After the success of Catapult at the Dundas store, it was easy to decide to put it at our original Cannon Street location. Catapult fits right in with our expansion plans."

Mission Accomplished : Two Thumbs Up!

"I have nothing but good things to say," adds Pravin. "After 12 years in the industry, Catapult is the best system I've seen yet. The reports are concise and easy to read. I used to spend my time managing my POS system; now I'm free to manage my store. And besides, who would have thought I could have a touch screen at my deli!"