Visual Merchandising and Store Design | VMSD.com

Eat, Stay, Love: With more people staying home for their meals, the grocery sector should remain healthy. But the battle is on for market share and finding the best formats for today’s shoppers.

By Steve Kaufman

Whole Foods’ brown paper shopping bags now contain the message, written large on the side, “I just got more of the good stuff for less.” The specialty grocery chain has long been known for “the good stuff.” It’s the “for less” part of the message that tells the story of today’s food retailing dynamic. “Everyone’s looking to save money,” says Ken Pray, director of store design for The Kroger Co. (Cincinnati).

The popular wisdom is that, in the current economy, food retailers will do better than others because people have to eat. And as consumers cut down their restaurant visits, food retailers get an even bigger slice of the pie. But competition for that slice is intense, and specific marketing messages will be important.

However, cautions Edward Parker, director of sales and marketing for the Design Services Group (DSG, Eden Prairie, Minn.), retailers can’t just switch overnight to a completely price-oriented strategy. “Then they’re battling Walmart,” he says. “And you can’t beat Walmart on price.”

Grocers don’t want to abandon quality, either, as more consumers are focused on staying healthy to combat the worry and cost of healthcare.

So there are multiple messages food retailers will have to convey, and the stores will be essential conveyors of those messages: convenience, speed, efficiency, quality, service, variety, health and freshness, as well as price.

Get in and Get Out
Some retailers are testing smaller formats that, at 15,000 to 20,000 square feet (or even smaller), are less than half the size of traditional supermarkets. It’s an attempt to fill the need of time-starved shoppers who want to buy basics and get in and out quickly.

“I call it the spoke-and-hub system,” says Parker, whose design firm is a subsidiary of Supervalu Inc. (Eden Prairie, Minn.) but also designs stores for regional operators like Pine Hills Market in Massachusetts, Ukrops in Virginia and Dahl’s in Iowa. “They have their big stores in the middle of the hub, where shoppers go to fill up their pantries. And they have the smaller fill-in stores throughout the area where shoppers go for their daily needs.”

Get in and Indulge
The same retailers are also testing larger, fancier stores. Kroger has been rolling out its Fresh Fare concept in various markets at roughly 70,000 square feet.