Ken Pray

Ken Pray had just earned a Master of Architecture degree at Washington University (St. Louis) and was heading toward a teaching career, when he took a turn down another aisle.

“While getting real-world experience, my first client was a supermarket, which seemed as good a way as any to gain experience,” he says. “But I never expected I would stick with it. After all, Howard Roark never designed supermarkets.”

But maybe Ayn Rand's hero of “The Fountainhead” hadn't connected individualism with sightlines, pathways and navigational signage. Pray stuck with it, refining his architectural skills at Cincinnati design firms Glaser & Myers and Peacock & Garn before going full time into retail as corporate architect at Thriftway. In 1988, he joined The Kroger Co. (Cincinnati) and is now in charge of store design for the country's largest grocery chain.

“I found I actually enjoyed the challenges of the retail environment,” he says. “In time, it became a specialty I couldn't let go of.”

Pray says his current job also fulfills his desire to teach. “Working with people across the company and country is probably the most satisfying part of the job,” he says. “I see it as an opportunity to learn, as well as to teach. I am really a teacher at heart.”

How have grocery stores evolved over the last 10 years?

“One-stop shopping” is the buzzword that has driven most supermarket development in the last 10 years. This is why grocery stores have gotten bigger and expanded their offerings to include more general merchandise. A typical grocery store 10 years ago was in the 40,000-50,000-square-foot range. Today, it's closer to 75,000 or 100,000 square feet.

The success of Wal-Mart has forced supermarkets to find ways to provide their customers with meaningful points of differentiation. Competing on price alone is insufficient against the massive leverage Wal-Mart controls. Yet, the elements of service, quality and specialty offerings – that's something a supermarket has a better chance of competing on.

Describe the grocery store of the future?

The term “grocery store” will become obsolete. Beyond providing a storeroom to sustain the hunting and gathering process, the facility will be designed to offer a comprehensive range of experiences and culinary encounters. It will become a collection of boutiques for sampling and selecting ever-evolving arrays of products and services. Basic commodities that don't need to be showcased and lugged around will be efficiently delivered to your home on a routine replenishment cycle.

Who does the grocery shopping in your house?

Both my wife and I do. She does the replenishment shopping, while I go for the fun stuff that isn't on the list.

I also see it as an opportunity to experience the store environment purely as a customer. To my dismay, I find I get distracted like most shoppers by the mundane realities of product, price and checkout lines, barely noticing the layout, the decor, the color palette – all the spatial qualities and ambience that I spend most of my life fussing about!

How did growing up in a college town (Madison, Wis.) in the 60s influence you?

It established my liberal perspectives on politics, notwithstanding my years in a conservative town (Cincinnati) and a conservative industry (supermarket retailing). I just can't figure out why we are so under-represented these days. (Where have all the flowers gone?)

Who inspires you?

I credit my parents: my father, a scientist, with persistent intellectual curiosity, and my mother, an artist, with enduring creative energy. Both are 85 years old, full of life, ambition and a sense of adventure. They have always inspired me to live life to the fullest.

Paper or plastic?

Plastic – because that's what they have at the self-checkouts, which are the ONLY lanes I ever use!