(NOTE: This is for stores with a shift dedicated to just the wet-rack. No stores that are expected to juggle dry tables, salads, and wets are included).
I decided to write this blog because a lot of people struggle with this aspect. It's certainly not cut and dry like stacking some avocados or bananas on a table. Believe me, I wish I could be the one to fight over who is going to put out the mangoes, but I'm not. Step by step, I have gone into detail so that even the most inexperienced person can complete this section.
1) Grab two banana boxes and start with the leaf lettuces. These will need to be re-trimmed. After re-trimming the ends, make sure to break off any leaves that are garbage. Customers will not buy lettuce looking like it was ran over by a tractor. In fact, the items you will want to re-trim are:
- Leaf lettuces
- Celery
- Cilantro
- Parsley
- Greens
- Root vegetables (a few times a week)
- Cabbage
2) Go to the head lettuce section. Throw the heads that look like something you would not buy into a box and save to re-trim later. Straighten up the remaining display.
3) Cull, straighten, and detail the rest of the wet-rack. You won't have to straighten up such things like bell peppers and broccoli because they will be filled later.
4) The leeks and green onions will likely need to be gone through. Take some time to make them presentable. They don't need to be perfect, but clean them up.
5) Go ahead and cut up some carrots and celery sticks. These only take a few minutes to fill the displays.
6) You should be a day ahead on your trimming of leaf lettuces, radishes, parsley, cilantro, and greens. Go ahead and fill these items.
7) I like to take this time to fill the "hard" items, such as bulk potatoes, asparagus, bells, cucumbers, cabbages, bagged carrots, etc.
8) If there is an item that wasn't trimmed from previous days, go ahead and trim up some product so it's on the rack.
9) To stay ahead on your trimming, and to make your life (or the next person if you have the day off) easier, trim one case each of green leaf, red leaf, and romaine lettuce. You can back off if you have more than one tray already. Also, make sure there is enough cilantro, radishes, greens, parsley, etc in the crisping trays for later in the day or the next.
10) Somewhere along the way, you're going to write you order for this section. Don't be ignorant. If you have 2 boxes of cucumbers in the back and it's a Saturday, order 4-5 so you can have enough for Sunday, our busiest day. On the other hand, don't order a ton of highly perishable items like greens, lettuces, asparagus, etc. Use your head and you will be fine.
There you have it. Looks easy? I don't think so. This is the toughest job in the produce department. Anyone who says it's not hard doesn't know what they are talking about. To re-trim everything on the rack, fill all displays, and to write an order on top of all this is NOT easy.
Now, filling mangoes or tomatoes requires no brain. Just pull off the old product, put new down, then old on top. It's that easy. Packaged salads have an expiration date on them. Just pull out the salads in their display, put the newer product in, then the close dated ones in front. FIFO. Ever hear of it? Also, I laugh when people treat writing a produce order like it's some sort of rocket science. Hmm, we have 7 red grapes in the cooler, but 2 will go out, meaning we have 5 left. It's a Saturday. Should I order 5 or 6 for tomorrow? Damn, I don't know what to do! I will spend the next 30 minutes figuring out how many to bring in because I have the biggest cooler in the district and I don't want ANY excess grapes, even though we use the first in, first out method.
Filling in the wet-rack is a lot harder than you might think. You can do it, but you might struggle because 8 hours is just not long enough to complete it without some help. It's possible if you don't have to worry about the organic section, but you do. I would say a 9-10 hour shift would successfully put in the wet-rack along with the organic section. 8 hour is just too short. This is especially the case when the warehouse has to stack flowers on every board and you have to find 6 wheelers to stack them for the florists who don't come in until 10:00. Having a helper clerk who doesn't have a brain doesn't help, either. The perishable freight usually enters the backroom sometime before they leave at midnight. If not, a member of the night crew will put away the dairy, meat, and produce. Anyways, the way they throw our boards in our cooler and back room makes me want to stab them. If you're doing the wet-rack and you're also fixing the freight, then you're automatically behind 30 minutes.
The point of this article is to give you a guide on how to go through the wet-rack. I hope this helps anyone who works in the produce department at Safeway.
