3 Ways a Commercial Freezer Can Help with Visual Merchandising

The success of a physical store or food establishment depends on its ability to grasp the attention of prospective customers and entice them to come in and explore your products. Unless you’re consistently attracting customers, it can get quite difficult to achieve the profits you need.

Visual merchandising is one of the top strategies that businesses use to attract traffic and convert it to paying customers. The concept of visual merchandising involves highlighting products to stimulate and encourage customer engagement. Considering that refrigerated products account for nearly 50% of total inventory in many stores, it’s critical that store owners don’t underestimate the effect of visual merchandising for their cold storage and freezing products.

Visual merchandising using commercial glass door freezers is highly effective not only in attracting potential customers, but also promoting impulse sales, both of which help to increase profits. Whether you’re selling ice cold bottled drinks, ice cream sandwiches, or fresh baked pies and cakes, you will need to invest in the appropriate refrigeration unit to keep your products at the appropriate temperature. Generally, you can choose between a glass door reach-in refrigerator or a glass door merchandiser, or both.

Commercial reach-in refrigerators are ideal for storing closed food products, such as bottles of milk, juice, and sauces, as well as open food products such as prepared salads and sliced tomatoes. Merchandisers, on the other hand, are ideal for packaged food products. Merchandising refrigerators and freezers are available in a wide array of shapes and sizes, from countertop models to huge 3-section floor units. They’re typically eye-catching, with bright interior lighting, lighted top sections, and attractive exterior colour options to help catch the attention of customers and make your products look their best.

Here are a few ideas to effectively showcase your cold food and beverage inventory using commercial refrigeration solutions:

1. Drive traffic with strategic placement

Customers typically enter a store with a predetermined list of items they need to purchase, which means that they’ll make their way to wherever those products are placed, and then choose the brands they prefer based on a personal criteria that may include size, cost, taste, and so on. But successful retailers try to push impulse purchases for items that shoppers may not necessarily require, but suddenly feel that they want them. Retailers achieve this by making the ‘want’ items easy to see and reach for. This may involve:

• Placing highlighted items within arm’s length
• Placing eye-catching signage at eye-level
• Placing food items at strategic locations, such as the entrance or at the checkout

Food retailers can take advantage of these proven tactics by purchasing commercial glass door refrigerators and freezers that display ‘want’ items in specific, high-traffic areas. For instance, during the warm summer months, you can place an ice cream freezer near the entrance to appeal to your customer’s sweet tooth while giving them a great way to cool down.

Similarly, you can place your refrigerated beverages at the checkout to entice your customers to take some refreshments for the road. You could also place staples like dairy products and juices at a huge refrigerator in the rear aisle of your store where shoppers can engage with the entire range of offerings.

2. Use a range of refrigerators

Your store space comes at a premium, so it’s important that you use an appropriate visual merchandising strategy to capitalize on the available square footage to maximize your profits. Using different sizes of commercial glass door refrigerators and freezers allows you to use your space efficiently.

For instance, you can supplement the standard row of double or triple-door units with countertop units that place some of your products at the critical eye-level area. Additionally, making good use of vertical space increases floor space that can be used for other sales opportunities. With modern innovative designs, you now have access to more streamlined commercial refrigerators and freezers, including the largest ones, to facilitate more reliable refrigeration in the available space.

Some glass door refrigerator styles to consider include:

1. Convenience store merchandisers

   Miniaturized versions of conventional merchandisers that feature lower height and smaller floor area coverage to maximize visibility and store space

2. Glass-sided merchandisers

   Typically used to store baked foods and showcase your freshest items from different angles. You can even include revolving shelves for greater appeal

3. Wine merchandisers

   They feature racks instead of standard wire shelves to hold wine at the perfect angle for easy visibility

4. Air-curtain merchandisers

   These are user-friendly and provide great visibility and easy selection of bottled beverages, entrees, or pre-packaged salads without opening the door. They are great for driving up traffic and sales.

5. Dual service merchandisers

   These are mostly found in delis and coffee shops. They feature a lower air curtain section where consumers can pick their bottled beverage or pre-packaged items, and an enclosed top section displaying fresh bakery items that are loaded by sliding the rear doors. Both or individual sections can be refrigerated or unrefrigerated.

You can also choose between sliding and swinging doors. Sliding doors are ideal for narrow aisles, but swinging doors have better door seals for better energy efficiency.

3. Leverage new technology to maximize visibility

Strategic inventory placement only does half the job in terms of converting buyers. The other half involves the use of eye-catching designs to grasp the attention of shoppers and entice them to make the purchase. Store owners can increase the visibility of their refrigerated and frozen products by using commercial glass door refrigerators that are illuminated with LED bulbs.

These bulbs enable the even output of directional light around the refrigerated offerings while minimizing distracting glares. They also have less heat output and energy consumption, and last longer before requiring replacement. The result is an accurate colour display with rich contrast to draw in your shoppers or even potential consumers from the streets. And with commercial freezers that are fitted with high-efficiency, double-panelled glass doors that feature low-emission film, your customers will have a crisp view of your refrigerated products.

With proper selection and strategic use of commercial glass door freezers, store owners can enjoy the benefits of visual merchandising, including increased traffic, sales, and revenues. Make sure to do enough research to find innovative designs of commercial glass door refrigerators and freezers for your retail outlet, restaurant, convenience store, or supermarket that will make merchandising your chilled and frozen products easy and cost-effective.

To learn more about using commercial freezers to visually merchandise, call Ancaster Foods at +1 855-888-9644 or contact us here.