Cool free crap for cheap #*&*$%ers...

[tloonya]

Can you be serious for a day here?
I am facing cool dilemma.
My customers are 50% elders who happened to be greedy stupid sons and daughters of the bitches and they love to get free stuff even if it is crap no one needs...
We are giving out some things and they get used to it so if we don't have it - the stares we are getting are the death stares!

As much as I hate this I have to come up with more stuff to give.

It has to be cheap for me and look good to them. So far I am going to order pens now and you please, give me some cool ideas. Ok?

[milee]

Totally radical idea, but stop giving out the free stuff.

Seriously, you're training your customers to only come for the swag. That means you're purposefully attracting the PITA customers like the one that tried to return the broken eggs that she dropped in the parking lot or the ones that take a bite from the bread and put it back on the shelf.  These are not the customers you want or need, so don't do anything to encourage them.

[Deleted]

free crappy cups of coffee. Old people love free crappy coffee.

[HoneyBBQ]

Jimmy John's has "free smells." Got anything that stinks?

[tloonya]

Jan 14, 2014 12:37:51 GMT -5 ArchietheDragon said:

free crappy cups of coffee. Old people love free crappy coffee.

What? Tell me mo'

[Deleted]

Jan 14, 2014 12:48:36 GMT -5 tloonya said:

Jan 14, 2014 12:37:51 GMT -5 ArchietheDragon said:

free crappy cups of coffee. Old people love free crappy coffee.

What? Tell me mo'

what more to tell?  


Buy the cheapest coffee you can find.   brew it weak.  Offer it for free.   Old people love it.

[tloonya]

Jan 14, 2014 12:51:27 GMT -5 ArchietheDragon said:

Jan 14, 2014 12:48:36 GMT -5 tloonya said:

What? Tell me mo'

what more to tell?  


Buy the cheapest coffee you can find.   brew it weak.  Offer it for free.   Old people love it.

How doo I brew coffee? In store...remember what happened with McDonalds with coffee

[Deleted]

Jan 14, 2014 12:59:06 GMT -5 tloonya said:

Jan 14, 2014 12:51:27 GMT -5 ArchietheDragon said:

what more to tell?  


Buy the cheapest coffee you can find.   brew it weak.  Offer it for free.   Old people love it.

How doo I brew coffee? In store...remember what happened with McDonalds with coffee

First get a monkey to eat the beans.   Then shift through the scat to harvest the beans.  Then crush the beans.  Then slowly pour 200 degree water over the beans into a double walled glass carafe.

[Rocky Mtn Saver]

Monkeys are expensive.  Can she use feral cats or something? 

[tloonya]

Jan 14, 2014 13:00:33 GMT -5 ArchietheDragon said:

Jan 14, 2014 12:59:06 GMT -5 tloonya said:

How doo I brew coffee? In store...remember what happened with McDonalds with coffee

First get a monkey to eat the beans.   Then shift through the scat to harvest the beans.  Then crush the beans.  Then slowly pour 200 degree water over the beans into a double walled glass carafe.

DH said he doesn't need no old bat drinking coffee and telling 'war' or 'recession' stories...

[tloonya]

Jan 14, 2014 13:00:33 GMT -5 ArchietheDragon said:

Jan 14, 2014 12:59:06 GMT -5 tloonya said:

How doo I brew coffee? In store...remember what happened with McDonalds with coffee

First get a monkey to eat the beans.   Then shift through the scat to harvest the beans.  Then crush the beans.  Then slowly pour 200 degree water over the beans into a double walled glass carafe.

And you considering $600 lb of coffee CHEAP!!!

[Deleted]

Jan 14, 2014 13:17:12 GMT -5 tloonya said:

Jan 14, 2014 13:00:33 GMT -5 ArchietheDragon said:

First get a monkey to eat the beans.   Then shift through the scat to harvest the beans.  Then crush the beans.  Then slowly pour 200 degree water over the beans into a double walled glass carafe.

DH said he doesn't need no old bat drinking coffee and telling 'war' or 'recession' stories...

Can't argue with him there.

[tloonya]

Customer suggested something like cookies etc...edibles anything.
Where do I find cheap edibles? Dollar stores seem have tons of it!

[Sum Dum Gai]

Do these old people that come in for free stuff purchase enough to offset the cost of the freebies?  If not, why exactly do you want a bunch of tightwad old folks hanging out at your store?  What's in it for you?

[wmpeon]

I agree with Dark (say it ain't so!).  If I were going to offer something free, it would be tied to a promotion that makes money.  An example would be to promote a specific item that you make a good margin on, and advertise that your customer would receive (insert item here) with that purchase.  I recall a previous post where you got a great deal on some produce (apricots?) and sold them for a tidy profit.  Would the buyers of those apricots have purchased more had they received a cheap & crappy pen?  You know your customers best, you tell us.

At the end of the day, the freebies need to have a meaningful result for your business.  You still need to make enough to pay your bills and eat, after all.

[ՏՇԾԵԵʅՏɧ_LԹՏՏʅҼ]

Don't offer "freebies" if all they're doing is flocking to your store for whatever crap they don't have to pay for.

If you want to give them freebies as an incentive to shop there more often, give them the freebie (a pen with store logo or name, a 2 for 1 coupon on some product you want to recycle/clear out, etc) - but ONLY give the freebie at the till to a paying customer who's actually made a purchase of your merchandise.

Otherwise, you'll just have a lot of traffic coming into your store to "graze" on the goodies or get a handout without actually buying anything.

[Peace77]

When is your slowest time?  Offer cheap coffee then.

Make a sign for your door:  Free gift with purchase if $25.00 or more. 
The free gift is the pen the says Tloonya's Store.

[Deleted]

Look here:

www.orientaltrading.com

page after page of cheap junk you can give away or fill your dollar bins with! 

you're welcome!!! 

[Sum Dum Gai]

This is the problem with only advertising sales and freebies. You're training your customers to only come in for free crap and during sales. The smartest thing Walmart ever did was come up with "Always low prices, always". Appeals to bargain shoppers, but encourages them to come in at any time instead of only during sales.

[Happy prose]

Try a punch card. Using coffe as example, you could do 5th cup free. They'd have to pay for the first four.

[xia]

What about those reusable “green” grocery bags? Put your store logo on it and you will get little of free advertisement and make them free with purchase above $50 (or more?) with option of customers being able to buy them if they spend less.

But I do agree with others training people to expect freebies does tend to attract some strange customers.

[sarcasticgirl]

And give a 5 or 10cent discount when they reuse a bag. Works for target!

Sent from my Nexus 4 using proboards

[tloonya]

One more time.
Yes, these freebies are going to be for paying customers only saying 'thanks for shopping with us'...
I give out eggs with $25 purchase. Jumbo! From day first. And people appreciate it.
I want to give something for smaller purchase.
My customers are so cheap they will come back for that crap they don't need and I will gain a customer.
Each dollar brought to my store is my dollar.

[milee]

Jan 15, 2014 10:58:42 GMT -5 tloonya said:

One more time.
Yes, these freebies are going to be for paying customers only saying 'thanks for shopping with us'...
I give out eggs with $25 purchase. Jumbo! From day first. And people appreciate it.
I want to give something for smaller purchase.
My customers are so cheap they will come back for that crap they don't need and I will gain a customer.
Each dollar brought to my store is my dollar.

But so what if you bring in an additional dollar if you're not making any money on it?

WTH would you give away $3 worth of eggs on a $25 sale? That's equivalent to a discount of over 10% on sales. No way in heck should you be giving out freebies on a sale of less than $25. This is why you're having to take out cc loans and don't know why you don't have any money in the bank.  If your customers are so cheap they need a free gift or additional discount on $10 worth of groceries, you don't want them to shop with you, you want them to keep walking on down to Walmart. Seriously.

[tloonya]

Jan 15, 2014 11:03:42 GMT -5 milee said:

Jan 15, 2014 10:58:42 GMT -5 tloonya said:

One more time.
Yes, these freebies are going to be for paying customers only saying 'thanks for shopping with us'...
I give out eggs with $25 purchase. Jumbo! From day first. And people appreciate it.
I want to give something for smaller purchase.
My customers are so cheap they will come back for that crap they don't need and I will gain a customer.
Each dollar brought to my store is my dollar.

But so what if you bring in an additional dollar if you're not making any money on it?

WTH would you give away $3 worth of eggs on a $25 sale? That's equivalent to a discount of over 10% on sales. No way in heck should you be giving out freebies on a sale of less than $25. This is why you're having to take out cc loans and don't know why you don't have any money in the bank.  If your customers are so cheap they need a free gift or additional discount on $10 worth of groceries, you don't want them to shop with you, you want them to keep walking on down to Walmart. Seriously.

With all disrespect...what $3 eggs It cost me a dollar. $1.09 to be clearer. Or you thought I was buying eggs in the supermarket to give them away?

[milee]

Loony, I get that the eggs cost you $1, so to you this is a 5% discount on the $25 sale.

I'm trying to get you to look at the customer side - to them, they'd pay around $3, so it represents over a 10% discount - which is huge on basic groceries like this. You're giving away the store unnecessarily.

Back up and look at the big picture. Do you want more of the cheap old geezers who glare at you if you're not giving them free stuff and the people who pay you with complicated WIC coupons? No. You want more of the customers who come in to buy your expensive rabbit, caviar and fresh stuff.  By giving away free crap, you attract the first (crummy) customers; I'm guessing that most of your caviar/rabbit customers don't care about a free pen or nasty coffee. Stop spending time figuring out what the cheap customers want and spend more time figuring out what the caviar/rabbit customers want.

Each $1 brought in is not necessarily a good thing. Spend less time on the low profit stuff and more time on the high profit stuff and you'll make more money for the same amount of work.

[milee]

Loony, I know we're kind of joking around here about cheap old people and stuff, but aside from the jokes I'm really trying to give you good business advice, not make fun of you or your customers.

I'm really, really, really good at helping businesses to make money. People used to pay me a lot of money to tell them what changes to make to make their businesses work and I've done the same thing for my own business and others that I work on the Boards of.  So it's good that we can joke, but I'm hoping that you will also step back and think about some of the things I am saying because with some changes you could be making a lot more money and working less at the same time.  Or you can just keep doing what you're doing and getting what your getting.    

[Rocky Mtn Saver]

Jan 15, 2014 10:58:42 GMT -5 tloonya said:

One more time.
Yes, these freebies are going to be for paying customers only saying 'thanks for shopping with us'...
I give out eggs with $25 purchase. Jumbo! From day first. And people appreciate it.
I want to give something for smaller purchase.
My customers are so cheap they will come back for that crap they don't need and I will gain a customer.
Each dollar brought to my store is my dollar.

Since you can't account for where 25% of your gross sales goes, only 75c of that dollar is yours. The rest apparently goes to fairies or something.

[Sum Dum Gai]

Fifty cents, at best, of each dollar brought to your store is yours. The other fifty cents is product cost of whatever they spent the dollar on. If you're giving away stuff to get the dollar in the door you get fifty cents minus the cost of the giveaway. This is assuming your markups are as high as you seem to think they are, which they can't be based on your own numbers or you'd be making four times as much money as you are.

Most grocery retailers do fine on far smaller markups, so it's not the end of the world, but you need to get a handle on your real costs so you can make better decisions about advertising and promotions.

[tloonya]

Jan 15, 2014 12:08:49 GMT -5 milee said:

Loony, I know we're kind of joking around here about cheap old people and stuff, but aside from the jokes I'm really trying to give you good business advice, not make fun of you or your customers.

I'm really, really, really good at helping businesses to make money. People used to pay me a lot of money to tell them what changes to make to make their businesses work and I've done the same thing for my own business and others that I work on the Boards of.  So it's good that we can joke, but I'm hoping that you will also step back and think about some of the things I am saying because with some changes you could be making a lot more money and working less at the same time.  Or you can just keep doing what you're doing and getting what your getting.    

milee,
you are wrong!
And this is why.
We have people here who are using 'slaves' or as they call them 'home attendants'.
These ladies driving them from store to store for price comparison and then they drive them around AGAIN for them to purchase what is cheaper. I see each of these old bats at least twice a day. If my prices are going to be high - they will not give me a penny!!!
And my day/foodstamps business is just what it is.
Next half of the day is younger clientele who are coming back out of appreciation FOR THE EGGS!

I had tried that your advise for 2 years and we had almost closed the store.
NOW I am not shaking when checks are coming.