“Staff Only” - behind the scene story at leading Latvian Grocery Maxima Stores

May 27, 2020

During grocery shopping, customers generally see the shopping area, checkout zone and, in some stores, a glimpse of the bakery section busily preparing fresh bread on-site. Each store has a door marked “Staff Only”, and to satisfy customer curiosity, Maxima is offering its customers the opportunity to see what happens on daily basis at the store to ensure that fresh products awaits its customers and shopping  experience is enjoyable.
 
“The aim of our ‘2025’ strategy is to be our customers’ choice Nr.1 every day. A range of people and departments are working to ensure that we receive this high rating from our customers, but on daily bases they have their closest contact to shop assitants. To ensure that our employees can take care of the store’s customers, it is crucial to consider their well-being at work, which is why, when opening new stores and reconstructing existing ones, we make significant investments to staff areas, providing an ergonomic work environment, a well-equipped kitchen and places to enjoy free of charge meals freshly prepared on site, as well as staff  rooms which are pleasant and cosy to rest. We will certainly continue this policy in the future. To better understand our employees’ work days, we decided to allow people to see the life of our staff behind the shopping area at the newly-opened Maxima XX store at 1 Rusova Street,” comments Maxima Latvija Retail Operations and HR Director Gunita Ķiesnere.
 
Each day, our stores await their customers with full fresh goods, but before they end up in customers’ shopping baskets, they are delivered and carefully stored in our staff areas—first delivered from the Maxima logistics centre to the delivery ramp, where they are divided between various storage zones—refrigerated rooms equipped with a special temperature regime, a packing room where products are packaged into convenient portions, and other premises.. A large number of products, such as our wide range of cakes, fresh and warm pastries, our varied salad options, marinated meats, and even sausages in some stores are prepared on site at the store—in the bakery, prepared food and meat production areas.
 
Modern convection stoves, quick-cooling refrigerated chambers, multi-functional mixers, next-generation ovens, modern meat grinders, and sausage-making equipment are just some of the technologies introduced to both the storage rooms and preparation rooms to improve the working day for production staff at Maxima stores.
 
Goods containers are organised on store premises in accordance with lean principles for higher efficiency: full containers are placed according to the location of each product category, zoned with special floor markings, while empty containers are placed separately so that they can be loaded onto incoming delivery vehicles quickly, freeing up space for full containers.
 
Some goods are packaged in the packing room before being displayed in the shopping area, while, thanks to careful work, the marketing office cuts price labels and prepares booklets and store discount and special offer pamphlets, which are then placed in the shopping zone.
 
In the shopping area, goods are also placed according to product category: for example, the dairy zone, meat and meat product zone, beverage zone, and household product zone, each which is overseen by a manager supervising product availability, pricing and shelf stocking.
 
 
Information for the media:
Liene Dupate-Ugule
Head of Communications, SIA "Maxima Latvija"
Tel.: 26425420
email: liene.dupate@maxima.lv 
www.maxima.lv