Visual Merchandising and Store Design | VMSD.com

Marrying drive-through convenience with a fresh-food emphasis was the goal behind Swiss Farms’ new prototype.

By Steve Kaufman

A drive-through convenience store really elevates the notion of “convenience.” How desirable not to have to get out of your car on that rainy midnight run for a carton of milk or loaf of bread.
 

But Swiss Farms (Broomall, Pa.), which introduced drive-through shopping to Southeastern Pennsylvania nearly 40 years ago, was ready to expand beyond that simple benefit. “We saw an opportunity to become more than just the emergency ‘fill-in’ store,” says ceo Paul Friel. “We wanted to compete with supermarket express lanes. That included prepared meals, fresh produce, gourmet cheese, baked goods and sandwiches.”
 

To do that, Swiss Farms needed to upgrade its image and to improve the drive-through experience. For example, the old stores had a few small windows. “Shoppers in their cars don’t need to see inside the store to get a six pack of coke,” Friel says. “But if we want to sell them fresh produce, they want to be able to see for themselves the lettuce, tomatoes and apples being selected and put in the bag.”
 

Chute Gerdeman Retail (Columbus, Ohio) was hired to do a thorough rebranding for Swiss Farms. “Our challenge,” says Lynn Rosenbaum, Chute Gerdeman’s director of environments, “was how to tell customers what’s inside the store when it’s all drive-through?”
 

Adding floor-to-ceiling windows on three sides of the store was one obvious fix. Visibility is better and the lights shining out from inside the store serve as visual cues to cars driving by. And, Rosenbaum says, windows are also likely to increase impulse buying.
 

Taking further advantage of the large windows, Chute Gerdeman designed a fixture program that configured the height of the shelves for maximum eye-level visibility. “We sat in our cars so we could see exactly what shoppers could and couldn’t see,” says Adam Limbach, Chute Gerdeman’s vp, brand communications. “Then we created sightlines so the entire store is visible from the car.”
 

A pylon with an LED sign increases visibility from the street and a series of 46-inch digital screens inside the store displays the product selection to shoppers during the ordering process. There’s even technology that links the screens to a meteorological web site, so messages can suggest certain products at specific times of the day or during particular weather events.