The first impression of a store is expressed in its design, its colors and the message it conveys to the consumer. In order for your store to capture the hearts of the right consumers, it is time you invest in the vessel in addition to its contents.
Lior Koren, Owner & CEO of KOREN, explains how supermarket and grocery design can promote healthy nutrition, protect the environment, and create a shopping experience at the level of a specialty market.
The design and planning of every physical store are based on a professional planogram that displays the optimal product variety and the best utilization of the sales floor while creating a convenient customer path based on easy orientation. The store’s design should best represent the brand’s values, and offer a shopping experience that justifies leaving the house, imparts a pleasant taste, and creates customer loyalty. The retail food industry, or in its wider sense FMCG (that includes cleaning materials, toiletries, and the like), is extremely complex, has unique characteristics, and is laden with operational constraints, for example, the multiple items in the store (SKU), and the need to divide them into categories that will enable orientation and a logical shopping continuum. The limited shelf life of a large portion of the products requires the integration of designated cooling, display, and shelving systems.
Hatzi Hinam, Cheese deli at the Holon Branch by KOREN[Photo: Aviv Kurt]For a store to survive and succeed, the retailer must maximize sales floor performance to offer a good and highly diverse experience even in a relatively small shop. In addition, grocery stores must be easy to clean and maintain and enable proper food storage and display infrastructure, subject to Health Ministry, business licensing regulations, and more.
Supermarkets, mini-markets, and even small stores in city centers require a relatively large staff. Professional planning will contribute to work efficiency and is liable to help in conserving staff. This retail field is known for its large sales volume with low and highly competitive profit margins; therefore, the professional design and planning of the store are critical to its success.
A Correct Buy rather than Overconsumption
As in any field, food retailers often encounter aggressive promotions that encourage Overconsumption (1+1, the second item at 50%, and the like), and when it comes to products with a short expiry date, the result is often food waste, environmental and economic damage. But there is another way: In recent years, we have begun to see an ever-growing number of carefully designed and well-planned grocery stores showing an excellent business performance that offers the customer a pleasant and convenient shopping experience, thus facilitating a correct and accurate purchase for his needs.
The store’s design can promote healthy nutrition and protect the environment. For example, promoting fresh and healthy food categories like fruit and vegetables. This category is allegedly wasteful for the retailer in the number of items per meter and requires a significant staff for sorting, loading, and regular cleaning. However, it can be attractive and profitable when planned and designed professionally, even in small city-center markets.
Bull Market, F&V category by KOREN[Photo: Aviv Kurt]An additional example is the promotion of bulk sale compounds to reduce packaging and food waste. Unlike other places, the Israeli consumer is used in bulk purchasing agricultural produce, spices, nuts, and the like. However, the Corona pandemic negatively impacted the subject and caused many retailers to begin needlessly packaging products in plastic containers and bags. Bulk sales allow the consumer to purchase precisely according to his needs, save on packaging, and neutralize brand dependency. It is important to create a super-professional work environment that enables easy operation, maintains cleanliness, offers self-service or tastings (or both), together with reduced depreciation and prevention of theft to create a successful bulk sales compound.
Investing in Specialized Categories
The supermarket is the primary address for food and cleaning material shopping. However, when referring to clothing, cosmetics, and even unique food products like wines, nuts, cheeses, and sausages, a special effort is required to “convince” the consumer to buy them as a part of their grocery purchases in the store, and not prefer to buy them in a specialty market that is perceived for the most part as more professional and having a larger variety of products. How can a supermarket clothing and housewares category be more attractive and profitable? By investing an effort into its appearance and creating a shopping experience at the specialty market level while ensuring compliance with the products’ quality, price threshold, and target audience.
An example of such is the unique design for the Swedish Food Market in the branch stores of the IKEA chain in Israel that was adapted to a local audience, differentiated from the rest of the store, and succeeded in causing customers who had concluded their shopping trip to become sufficiently intrigued to pass through the complex and experience the Swedish foodstuffs offered there.
IKEA, Design and Build of Swedish food shop by KOREN[Photo: Aviv Kurt]Re: Tech- Assimilating Technologies
In recent years, the retail field has been undergoing a technological revolution. Start-ups and hi-tech companies (many of which are Israelis that appeal primarily to a clientele abroad) are working diligently at developing advanced and innovative technologies for supermarkets and the retail food industry; some of these companies are collaborating with leading global retailers. Assimilating technologies can promote traditional stores and allow them to cope with the growth online, update and improve the customer experience, allow the retailer to manage its employees better, and improve procurement, operation, and inventory management procedures. These include self-service checkouts and autonomous payment, shelf monitoring and inventory management systems, navigation and orientation technologies, digital signage systems, integrated screen display facilities, access to information concerning products and promotions, emphasizing personalization, augmented reality technologies, and more.
Examining the relevance of technology to a specific chain or store and performing successful assimilation requires a deep understanding of the store’s layout, sales array and operating constraints, the conduct of the retailer and staff, customer behavior and preferences, visibility, and orientation considerations. Adjustments are often required in the design and planning of the store, changes in the existing display array, and proper communication of the technology to the customer and staff – in these processes, we can assist the retailer and technology developers greatly in accessing information, providing professional advice and overseeing the assimilation process.
The writer is the owner and CEO of KOREN (Koren Visual Solutions) – a company for designing and constructing commercial complexes, supermarkets, retail chains, and stores that offers a complete service to the retailer, including formulating a unique concept, planogram, architectural planning, full-scale design and planning of the shelving and display system, graphic design and implementation, production, on-site installation, and oversight. The company specializes in creating advanced points of purchase, improving the business performance of the sale floor (revenue per meter), and creating a unique shopping experience.
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