THE BASICS

Downtown Glen Ellyn, Illinois is home to one of the freshest and most innovative stores for cooking and food lovers locally, regionally and even globally. Open since September 2011 at 490 North Main Street, in a beautiful historic landmark building, is Marcel’s – a fresh kind of culinary experience.

Jill Foucré, a longtime resident of Glen Ellyn, embarked on her lifelong dream to combine her family heritage, her love of cooking and entertaining, and her highly successful business skills into a retail and cooking school destination.

Named after Jill’s grandfather, a French chef and restaurateur, Marcel’s is a gathering place to cook, create and celebrate. A welcoming state-of-the-art kitchen for cooks of all ages and skill levels, is a place to learn, watch, meet new people and old friends – a place to pull up a chair, gather around the table and discover fabulous food adventures.

As a start-up retail business, the need to keep a very close eye on costs is extremely important. From fixtures and inventory to a complete store build out and retail POS system, the fixed costs were adding up. The Point-Of-Sale (POS) system, while robust, was designed for a more ‘traditional’ in-store or on-line sales setting, with a very low degree of flexibility when it came to integrating a website and class calendar into Marcel’s offering. Classes and gift cards, in particular – were key to the success of the new venture.

HOW WE HELPED

Working closely with retail brand experts and designers, Lisa Sallwasser of LS + Team and Beth Howley, we were hired by Marcel’s to create an online presence that supported the store’s newly developing brand, while working within the closed-loop system of Radiant Systems’ CounterPoint online offering.

Jill Foucré knew exactly what she wanted – and needed – in a calendar system that would allow customers to view, search and book in-store classes. When presented [by an outside developer] with a calendar option costing in excess of $20,000 to start, we worked to develop an open source, PHP-based solution that provided exactly what Marcel’s needed, at a fraction of the cost.