5 Key Features of Retail Scales
Retail scales are essential for shopkeepers, such as greengrocers, butchers, delis and even stalls at farmers' markets. This is because it’s now a legal requirement to have accurate, precise, Trade Approved scales, and that’s just one of the features that retail scales offer.
In this blog post, we will look into the 5 key features of retail scales and how they can benefit you.
Trade Approved
As mentioned briefly above, Trade Approved Scales are now essential for many businesses. We explain this further in this blog post, but to summarise using a Trade Approved scale is a legal requirement when the price of your goods are based on their weights.
Ultimately, Trade Approved Scales were created to protect customers from spending more than the goods they’re receiving are worth. They must be accurate and they must be reliable so that they can provide repeatable readings.
Waterproof
Although not a requirement, retail scales tend to also be waterproof. If you’re regularly using a scale in a wet or dusty environment, then a waterproof retail scale is the prime choice. For butchers or fishmongers, then waterproof scales are key. With a waterproof scale, it’s easier to clean down scales that come in regular contact with food, preventing the scale from becoming unclean and unhygienic.
Stable Indication
One feature that is particularly useful for retail scales is the stable indication function. This notifies you of the stability of the display. If you’re using the scale in windy conditions, the indicator will let you know if the weight reading is reliable and unaffected by the wind or other elements.
This is not to be confused with the spirit level, which indicates whether the scale is level.
Price Look-up codes (PLUs)
The benefit of Price Look-up codes (PLUs) is that they allow users to pre-store prices for products, enabling them to be called up later easily by pressing a single key to access the previous details.
This speeds up the transaction process, improves customer mood, and eliminates the need to store product price information in your own memory! These buttons can also be labelled to make for easier navigation.
Portability
Portability is a final key feature of a retail scale. For business owners that are only using their retail scale in store, then this is not a necessity. However, if visiting farmer’s markets or going to expos are a regular occurrence for you, portability is a feature you probably need to consider.
Retail scales from Marsden
If you’re looking for accurate retail scales, then look no further. Marsden retail scales are reliable, portable and accurate and both are currently on sale!
The Digi DS-781 Price Computing Scale is a Trade Approved retail scale with up to 99 PLUs available for quick transactions. It also has customer and operator displays, so you can simply leave it out for customers to use or operate it yourself, plus with Tare and Zero functions, weighing has never been easier.
Alternatively, the Digi DS-781SS Waterproof Price Computing Scale is completely waterproof. That means it’s protected from any ingress from water or other liquids and is easier to keep clean. Choose this scale if you work as a butcher, fishmonger, or even on a deli counter!
Further Reading
Now you may know what Trade Approved retail scales are, but how do they get a Trade Approval? And why do they get rejected? Find out more here.
We previously wrote a couple of blog posts detailing how to get the most out of your retail scale. Click here to read this series.
The term IP ratings and waterproof have come up a few times during this blog post, but what do they really mean? Read our in depth guide to IP Ratings here.