More and more retailers are flipping their model and moving from a store designed to help shoppers move through quickly, purchase and leave to a model where the store is a destination for more than for what the store is traditionally known.
The photo (click on the image for a larger version) shows a bar inside the Whole Foods Market store I visited (and wrote about) on the Upper West Side of New York a couple of days ago. Yes, a bar in a supermarket. In fact, we had lunch there and a few drinks … in a supermarket. From where we sat we could see people doing their shopping. Indeed, some came into the supermarket operated bar for a drink mid shop.
The bar and the extraordinary range of many product categories in this store and the over full aisles – yes the store is not the traditional blocked and wide-aisle supermarket – make this a destination supermarket where you could happily spend hours exploring food, shopping , eating and socialising. This is not a supermarket how we think of them. The model has been flipped.
The Australian newsagency model has primarily been about convenience – location, ease of parking and fast shopping. As more retailers have taken on what we offer, convenience is not as important.
This supermarket visit leaves me thinking more about destination opportunities for newsagents that could have shoppers staying longer, making speed of the shop less important. I have written several times in the past about coffee (and some newsagents have run with this). I still think coffee, either take-out or as a destination, works for many newsagent situations. Equally, a cafe or some other food offer works. There are others too which I’ll explore another time.
In this post I wanted to note simply that in this supermarket I have got to see an excellent example of flipping the model and thereby making visiting the store more compelling for shoppers. We should not be bound by the tradition of our model.