Supabarn: Delighting shoppers with their always-on payments system

2021 marks 30 years of Supabarn. Founded by Theo Koundouris, the family owned & operated supermarket chain was established to serve its community with quality, locally-sourced produce at competitive prices, all while delivering exceptional service.

Now spanning ten stores across ACT and NSW, Supabarn has grown into a successful grocery business – one which needed a payments solution that would help it to adapt to the increase in demand it was experiencing as a result of the pandemic, while meeting its need for a reliable platform as a growing, multi-site business.

Painfree migration enabled the business to continue as normal

Supabarn has been with incumbent payment vendors since its inception despite recurring issues with systems outages and a lack of tailored support, which no longer fit the business’ operational needs. General Manager, Theo, expressed the biggest challenge with modernising the organisation’s payments systems was overcoming the lack of confidence that internal stakeholders had in non-bank vendors. However, once the cultural shift was achieved and the benefits of digital transformation was made crystal clear, the migration process proved to be incredibly seamless.

“Till’s personalised service was a turning point in our decision-making process. They listened to our needs and presented us with a perfect fit solution which instilled a lot of confidence in us – particularly those who were hesitant about shifting to the new kid on the block – that we had made the right choice and that confidence remains today .”

The supermarket chain implemented Till’s integrated POS terminals and Merchant Portal solution across six of its stores. Discovery to implementation took place in just six weeks, enabling Supabarn to do business as usual whilst integrating its new Till solutions into the existing POS system.

“The Till team organised and facilitated the changeover with minimal input from our team, making the transition seamless.”

A high-tech alternative to age-old payments platforms

Simplified reconciliation has proved to increase operational efficiencies by 30% - Till’s Merchant Portal makes it easy for Supabarn’s staff to view and track transactions and automates the previously manual end-of-day reconciliation process.

With secure and reliable connectivity, Supabarn can also handle busy periods more effectively. Since going live with Till six months ago, the supermarket chain has experienced a 100% uptime on their payment services, saving them between $20k-$30k in potentially missed sales.

“The support provided by Till Payments is second to none. Not only did Till ensure our POS terminals were up and running, but also ensured our whole networking system in-house was completely connected and secure so no dropouts would occur. You just can’t buy service like that”.

Unlocking the value of payments data

The future is bright for Supabarn and Theo looks forward to unlocking the valuable data insights presented by Till’s platform. He believes having a holistic overview of the business’ transactions and customer payment behaviour will help the firm make important business decisions based on what customers want.

“Small to medium sizes businesses in Australia have a significant disadvantage not being able to tap into payments data, something our large competitors have been doing for years. These insights will not only help us retain but increase our customer base over the coming years and will undoubtedly have a huge impact on our top line. As Till further develops these data insights with their incredible platform, we will be able to integrate this data further into our decision making. We see these data analytics capabilities as an exciting opportunity to level the playing field between us and the major chains.”

“We know there’s huge potential in strategically utilising data insights to optimise business outcome and we’re excited to finally tap into a payments solution that will enable us to do just that.”

Supabarn plans to become the first Australian ‘checkout-less’ supermarket, fully supported by technology. The promising partnership between Supabarn and Till Payments has enabled Supabarn to journey in becoming a leader in innovation in the Supermarket retail industry.

Keen to modernise your business payments solution? Chat to a member of our team on 1300 369 692 and request a callback.