I'm frozen lead, trained to be grocery manager and worked grocery most of my kroger life.  Waiting for a store that I want to be grocery manager in.   I'm picky.   The main difference between the two departments you'll have to deal with is delegation of tasks. In frozen you have a lot more control because you are able to closely monitor everything. However in grocery, your crew will be bigger and you'll need to delegate out a lot of the things you're used to doing yourself in frozen. Make sure your crew is filling their shelf extenders on the aisles they work every night. If you have them do it first, they won't have an excuse not to do it, and it doesn't take that long when spaced out between each person. Also balances, in frozen you can take care of them yourself when you order, grocery is much bigger and you won't have time to monitor aisle that closely. Make sure your crew is scanning their residual backstock and dealing with the mispicks as necessary, either by swimming them out or finding space to run through them. Because of the size of the department, it's very easy for mispicks to get out of hand and you'll quickly have a huge pile of product. Things snowball a lot quicker, so it's very important to stay on top of things like that.

Another difference are the distributions. Grocery gets a lot of them, so always pull your ESI sheet early and plan out your displays, lobby, & ad accordingly. Lobby changes are usually mostly distributions, so you can use them to build, and fill as necessary after.

Just like how you had to get used to how things sold at what price point, the same will be true with grocery. Some things sell really well at a specific price point, and not as well on others. That's purely an experience & common sense type of thing. Mega events are always big, so be sure to keep on top of those as best as possible. Depending on the volume of your store, it may be necessary to bring in extra product to keep on fast movers.

3 tier baskets. Kroger product only. A lot of stores get in trouble for this, as they are trying to find space to move through extra product, they use these, but they need to be Kroger product only, and the ones on the aisle should be set to compliance. Same with your saddlebags. Get with your coordinator/store manager to see how many can be used for store choice.

Power panels are good to be used as space to move through small amounts of extra product, utilize them. Often times you can use excess shipper product when it starts to sell too low for it to look good.

Product on the bunker racks also need to be set to compliance.

A good grocery coordinator will be helpful with any questions you have, and they should be able to come out to help, especially when you are new to offer advice. They should also be making key call-outs on e-mails and conference calls for especially big events.

Basically, just keep things to compliance. Keep everything looking good. Keep balances correct. Keep the back room looking good, always keep extra items like sugar/water/certain big-k's on hand in the back room. Keep on top of ads, plan everything out early, utilize your people and things should flow relatively well.

The biggest hurdle will be the holidays. Each store should have a different area of the back room dedicated to holiday items. Make sure you're bringing them in early, and organizing your back room accordingly, by aisle helps a lot. For example, our store has about 10 pallet wide double high rack on the back wall, we clear out the bottom and utilize that for holiday items. Make sure they are being filled every night during key sales week and you'll be dandy.

The biggest mistakes I see are letting things snowball. Someone calls in, so they sacrifice certain things, and then never get caught up. Not dealing with excessive backstock/mispicks etc. Not scanning residual in favor of getting more stock put up, causing balances to go out of whack and even more product coming in that shouldn't. Also, not utilizing fast mover carts appropriately. And lastly, not having displays to compliance. Many try to use display space to move through excess product, often from the week prior sales, using required display priorities to do so. Get with your store manager/coordinator to see how many priorities you are responsible for, and then you can use those that you are not, to run through extra product.

Also, everything on display has to be on sale, so always date your shippers, 2 weeks and they are not gone? Kill them, and deal with it, unless they are required per display compliance. Want to start moving product early? Get your file clerk to put a sale on it.