The Best Stores: Where Are They and What Do They Look Like?

ONE OF THE QUESTIONS that anybody writing about store design tends to get asked is “what’s the best store?”

A silly question really, given that it rather depends on what is being sought and what is considered a hallmark of being “best.” There is also the expectation that whatever the answer might be it will have the words new or latest attached to it. This again is the kind of thing that is fraught with peril as implicit in this is the notion that anything that predates the given response will, somehow or other, not measure up to what’s out there at the moment.

Considering food, across Europe there is a broad canvas from which to select. When it comes to big stores, Intermarche or possibly E.Leclerc in France, Tesco or perhaps Sainsbury’s in the U.K. or maybe Rewe or Edeka in Germany, would all have stores that would be contenders, but for different reasons. In some instances, it might be the way in which tech is deployed front of shop, in others the manner in which the visual merchandising is conducted or in others the experience as a whole. And just to confuse things, there will be stores that are a mix of all three (the Edeka flagship in central Düsseldorf, opened in 2018, remains a store that will raise eyebrows and smiles in this respect in equal measure).

And then there are smaller food stores. In the U.K. alone, it would be a real tussle to separate the “best” from Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and, possibly, the few Whole Foods Market outposts that are mostly dotted around London.

The next time that you go looking for the optimum shop of any kind, bear in mind that retail is a near-infinitely various universe and that judging “metrics” like good, better, best is just a matter of opinion. All this and I haven’t even mentioned fashion, general merchandise, home furnishing or department stores.

Best bet? Don’t ask.