A fixture in Harrisville for more than 60 years, Henry's Meat Market has evolved to keep pace with technology and customer preferences.

The four-generation family-run store's latest advancement is the installation of a point-of-sale (POS) checkout system that replaced a cash register.

Grant Craig, great-grandson of founder Jim Henry, left his accounting job at PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2019 to lead the expansion of the business to a second location, which is expected to open in Cranberry Township in spring 2023.

He is running the store with his brothers, Ian and Lance and Henry.

While he was hunting locations for the new store, the line of customers that forms through the Harrisville shop at peak hours due to the time it took to ring up a sale on the cash register continued to be an issue.

“We had to type everything into the old-school cash register,” Craig said. “We had a single register. We had to type in the entire price — $4, 99 cents, meat. It worked, but the problem was your lines start to build up.”

With no room to add a second cash register, Craig turned to his uncle, John Giles, who was in the process of starting a new business called Round 2 POS.

Giles has experience in the point of sale business. He started Future POS in Center Township in 1998, but sold it and is now launching Round 2 POS with a staff of 24 employees.

“They just had a cash register before,” Giles said. “Very simple and basic. No bar-code scanning. No record of sales. Nothing to track merchandise. Lines wrapped around the corner during busy times. They were due for a technology update.”

When a customer selects some steaks or some of the market's other fresh, smoked or marinated meats or other products, the item is weighed on a scale that produces a bar code with an embedded price that is specific to that product. The new checkout scanner reads the bar code and displays the product, price and weight, Giles said.

“It really streamlines the checkout process. That was their Achilles heal,” Giles said. “During peak times, it helps alleviate traffic and keeps customer happy.”

Giles said he and his team developed the POS system and installed it at Henry's to test functionality. He said he believes other businesses will want the new system.

Giles said he he picked the name Round 2 POS because it marks his second venture into the point-of-sale business.

“This is my second time around. I'm not figuring stuff out the hard way this time. I know what to do,” he said.

His new office is in the building that used to house Twice Loved Appliances on Route 8, which is next door to his former business, Future POS.

He said he started Future POS in 1998 in the basement of his grandmother's house before moving it a couple of times and acquiring the Route 8 building 10 years ago.

The new business is growing fast and is developing new POS software.

The POS system at Henry's is the market's latest adaptation to keep up with demand and changing customer needs.

In its early years, the store operated as a locker plant, Craig said.

If a customer bought a quarter of a beef cow, the meat would be cut and placed a locked freezer assigned to that customer, he said.

When the customer wanted a chuck roast, they would come to the store and an employee would retrieve the roast from the freezer.

When household freezers became readily available, Henry knew the locker plant system no longer would be needed.

“Grandpap said, ‘Lets start smoking meat, ham, beef sticks, bacon,’” Craig said. “That really caught on.”

Changes have continued to be made since then.

“Since I was a kid, we've really expanded our freezer to over 100-plus feet of grab-and-go freezers and probably about 90 to 100 feet of display cases, at least,” Craig said.

That model will be used in the new store that will be located on a 2.25-acre lot at 20865 Route 19 across the highway from Tractor Supply in Cranberry Township.

The new store will have 150 feet of open freezers and 40 feet of display cases, and a smokehouse. The shop will measure 10,000 square feet and about half will be the retail area, he said.

The POS system, which was installed last summer, quickly proved its value.

“Labor Day weekend was the first major trial run. It crushed it,” Craig said.

Then came Christmas time.

“Christmas is our busiest time of the year with wall-to-wall people. It was so much faster (last year). In the past, the line would wrap around the store,” Craig said.

The new system has many other capabilities. It scans credit cards and electronic benefits transfer cards, tracks sales and merchandise, and produces sales reports, he said.

Employees can easily check a transaction if a customer has a question.

The new system has reduced errors that used to occur at the old checkout, Craig said.

New products and their process can be added into the system easily, he said.

Gift cards that predate the new system have been added to it.

He said Giles and his team always are available for assistance.

The shop in rural Harrisville has 800 to 900 loyal customers, but more are expected to at new shop in bustling Cranberry Township.

“We expect to be busier there,” Craig said.

At least two of the new POS systems will be used at the new store.

Henry's Meat Market has 10 employees, but more will be hired for the new store.

When the new store opens, 10 people will work there, and five will work at the Harrisville market, Craig said.

Customers from Cranberry Township and Pittsburgh are the target audience for the new store. Those customers currently travel to the market in Harrisville for the same reason as customers in that area.

“People come here for quality. Specialty products. Stamped, certified Angus beef,” Craig said.

Some of the specialty products are homemade kielbasa, sausage, burgers, beef sticks and jerky.

“Everything we make is made with 100% homemade recipes. It tastes different. That's why people come here,” Craig said.

He said he has a 40-page recipe book.