Iceland Foods is a British supermarket chain founded in 1970 in Oswestry. Famous for predominantly selling frozen foods, they have over 1,000 stores across the UK.
Iceland Foods were one of the first customers in the UK to use Volumatic’s CountEasy money counting scales when they were first launched over 20 years ago – and they love them so much they still use them to this day…
Challenges Faced by Iceland Foods
Back in 2004, Iceland Foods were looking to improve efficiency across their stores – something as a business they constantly strive to do, in order to make things easier for their in-store teams and better for their customers.
One area that was identified as inefficient by Iceland Food’s Store Management teams was the time taken up by manual cash counting and reconciliation each day.
Having already purchased Countercache Classic secure storage units to keep their cash takings safer at their till points, Iceland was already familiar with and trusted Volumatic, so approached them again to see if any of Volumatic’s other intelligent cash handling solutions could help them out.
The Volumatic Solution
Having recently launched their CountEasy money counting scales just before Iceland approached them, Volumatic knew they had the perfect solution for Iceland Food’s dilemma.
They demonstrated the CountEasy, and seeing how quick and accurate it was, with its ability to count a till drawer in less than a minute, as well as being able to count cash in different ways – small batches of notes, straps and bricks of notes, and, of course, coins – Iceland Foods agreed to trial the money counting scales to see if it could help their stores.
The Outcome
The benefits of the CountEasy were seen straight away, with a typical store with between three and four checkouts reducing their cash counting time from one hour to around 15-20 minutes. Delighted with the results, Iceland Foods then rolled out CountEasy money counting scales to all of their stores
20 years later, in 2024, Iceland Foods are still using Volumatic's CountEasy devices in all their supermarkets and are happy to sing its praises.
"The proof is in the pudding," says Iceland Foods Consumables/Process Manager Lee Boswell, "The CountEasy was ahead of its time 20 years ago, and the fact that we're still using it today and it's still providing us with improvements in both efficiency and accuracy speaks for itself. We plan to keep using these machines for a long time."
Lee, who has worked for Iceland Foods for over 22 years, previously worked as an Iceland Foods Store Manager and remembers how much easier the CountEasy made cash counting when it was first adopted by his store. "From an end-user point of view, it definitely helped us to become more efficient in-store and saved us so much time, meaning we could help our customers more. The accuracy of the machines has always been spot-on too."
Don Irwin, another member of the Consumables and Process Team at Iceland Foods also praises Volumatic for its support and aftercare, stating: "We've never really had any problems with the machines, but over the course of 20 years, we do have to maintain and replace machines sometimes, and Volumatic have always been there to support and ahead of the game when it comes to supporting us in updating the machines to accept new notes and the like."
He added: "Any time we've had to request telephone support from Volumatic, they've always been helpful and prompt."
When asked about the best thing about CountEasy, for Lee, the answer is simple: "Since we've started using the CountEasy Iceland Foods has gained a consistent approach to cash counting across all our stores. We all used to do things slightly differently, but now we all follow the same efficient process, which not only improves the accuracy of our reconciliation but also makes it much easier to identify any discrepancies and sort them out quickly. The CountEasy really has made our store's lives so much easier."
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