VAR Satisfies Major Midwestern Grocery Chain With Specialty Keyboard

Fareway Stores, Inc., a grocery store chain based in Boone, Iowa, had a problem. The company had been using point of sale (POS) and paging keyboards for several years in many of its 66 stores throughout Iowa. Unfortunately, the company that had made the keyboards had stopped manufacturing them. Therefore, Fareway Stores needed to find a source for new keyboards.

VAR Seeks Replacement Keyboard
Midlands Business Equipment, a Des Moines-based POS VAR, had supplied POS and bar-coded meat labeling equipment to Fareway for many years. The VAR now had to source a replacement keyboard for its customer's scanning systems. Midland looked at several alternative keyboards prior to presenting a select few to Fareway.

Fareway Stores decided to test the PasKeyboard from Rapid Transaction Interface, Inc. (RTI). The PasKeyboard was tested in conjunction with the existing Innovax 6000 POS Solution. The integration, using the software tools supplied by RTI, proved to be straightforward, with no change required to Innovax's "Aurora" POS application code. The checkers readily accepted the new keyboards.

Ringing Up Produce Items
When it comes to ringing up produce (fruits and vegetables), most grocery stores have price look up (PLU) lists which require the checkers to memorize, or look up, numbers for each of the different items. Some systems have paging keyboards which require checkers to flip to the appropriate page, then select the correct item.

Changing Key Faces Provide A Solution
With the RTI PasKeyboard, however, these methods are no longer needed. When a customer has produce to be rung up, the checker simply depresses the alphabetized key that corresponds to the first letter of that item, such as 'A' for apples. Then the keyboard changes to reflect the variety of apples available. These keys are also alphabetized. The checker depresses the correct key and the item is rung up.

The RTI PasKeyboard also has the ability to use different colors for the fruits if desired. Additionally, fruits that are sold by the pound could be a third color or be made to flash on and off. These methods prompt the checker to place the item on the scale before depressing the key. This speeds up what used to be one of the slower parts of the typical grocery sale. At the end of the sale, cashiers simply depress the 'subtotal' key and the same keys change from produce items to tender (regular) keys. This ability to change modes simply by depressing a key permits a wide variety of applications.

The Results Of The Installation
Midlands' Vern Blasberg points out that these features not only save cashiers time and effort, but they also save significantly on the time devoted to training new cashiers. Fred Greiner, vice president of Fareway Stores, adds that Fareway's cashiers are gratified by how easy the new keyboards are to use. And apparently not a single cashier misses the old PLU books.