4 Part Series – Your Shrink Action Plan
Article 1: Your First Week of Shrink Tracking — A Checklist

Shrink averaging 3.0% is quietly eroding independent grocer margins, and nearly one in four stores are seeing it increase. This first installment of a four-part series walks you through a simple daily tracking system to establish your shrink baseline in one week — what to capture, how to do a quick daily close, and how to calculate end-of-week numbers by department and cause. READ MORE

Article 2: Red Flags You’re Overordering in Fresh Departments

A significant portion of shrink isn’t theft or spoilage — it’s overordering. This second installment identifies six warning signs that your buying habits are creating shrink before product ever hits the shelf. Includes a simple two-week test to right-size your orders without hurting sales. READ MORE

Shrink Remains a Quiet Threat to Grocery Margins

Shrink does not announce itself — it accumulates quietly across departments until it becomes a margin problem that is hard to reverse. This article examines why shrink deserves consistent attention and what independent grocers can do to get ahead of it before it shows up in the financials.  READ MORE

Featured

Winning the Shrink Battle — How Independent Grocers Can Maximize Their Margins

Shrink silently erodes profits through spoilage, theft, overordering, and errors — and for independent grocers operating on razor-thin margins, it can be the difference between a profitable store and one that struggles to reinvest. This article walks through a practical three-step approach to measuring, controlling, and reducing shrink, with real-world results from grocers using FMS’s GOT Systems.  READ MORE

Back to Resource Library