Peter Huskins and Norrelle Goldring of ShopAbility round up the latest and greatest in trial and refresh stores.
Kmart Keysborough
From the outside this store does not look any different from most other Kmart stores, but scratch below the surface and there are some neat initiatives being trialled:
- smaller ranges in most Depts
- more space for remaining SKU’s and ranges
- clutter removed from the aisles
- welcoming staff – what a difference!
- clearer price ticketing with rounded $ price points
- better housekeeping
No wonder the Customers and Sakes are returning, they’ve gone back to basics with an offer that the average Shopper can understand and relate to.
Coles Flemington
Another of the Refreshed stores, although when we visited in February, the center was not yet completed with vacant stores and builders still walking around.
But the Coles store was ready – and how!
This store is a continued evolution of the new Refreshed stores that are popping up in most states. The store standard was superb for 9am, with plenty of staff wlking around fine tuning the presentation and answering questions and generally being attentive.
It feels like this store is under trading considerably, and will need to bed in with the local shoppers before it’s real potential can be reached.
Coles Oakleigh
This store is a trial store, similar to Donvale, and has many of the attributes of other Refreshed stores – but there is more!
Oakleigh is well worth a visit as there are many initiatives here that have not appeared at other stores as yet or are part of the regular roll out, yet they combine well to make a store that is definitely different and definitely progress on most of the others:
1. the Cooking Shop with black and grey headers and fixtures and has all of the home cooking needs well displayed and categorised
2. “Toblerone” signs in the Fresh depts. and on the gondola ends, a triangular shape that can be seen from all sides
3. food to go area with cold drinks, sandwiches and sushi located on a front gondola end
4. mid aisle “special” bays
5. Recipes on shelves in Grocery
6. separate weight loss/ control section that has been separated from the normal Health Foods offer. It also stocks a range of well known Protein supplements.
7. better sub-categorisation in Depts such as Pet Food and Health and Beauty
8. Branded supplier stands in Health and Beauty
9. shelf ready trolleys for high volume products
10. dedicated freezer doors and chiller sections for Specials
11. Market Fresh price tickets in the Fresh Depts – we did not like these as they do not drive a Price message at all. If you train your Shoppers to look for and respond to price driven Specials why hide then with different terminology. It appears hypocritical….
12. Seasonal events in an aisle not lost on a back wall or in a corner
The down side is that it makes the Depts such as Paper or Household Cleaning look positively boring and they must be an opportunity for an astute and enterprising supplier to work with Coles to drive the Shopping experience to a new level.
No matter how much you like or dislike the proliferation of PL, it is here to stay. Apparenlty the PL mix in Coles is at 22.5% well on the way to their target of 30% of sales. By looking at some of the new packaging Coles are introducing they have already upped the ante with innovative edesigns and superb graphics – hello Marketing Depts!!
However I do not like the treatment of Confectionery – it is a retrograde step – harder to shop due to haphazard sub category adjacencies and flows, using Perspex dump bins for hang sell bags (please!!)and poor housekeeping. Certainly not in keeping with the rest of the store.
Coles continue to impress with the roll out of these stores and their trial programs. None of it is neck snapping rocket science, most initiatives have been done before either here or overseas, and copied inot these refreshed stores.
The difference is that we have come to accept bland supermarket offers as the norm, and any change is seen as a good change.
This store hopefully proves that these types of initiatives will eventually be developed and rolled out across the whole store and will be permanent, we’ve been holding oru breath long enough!
PS – let’s see what Woolies response is when they complete the Caringbah refurb later this year. Coles have left WW behind with their Refresh program and it will be interesting to see if and how they react with something other than just Price. – Peter Huskins
FoodWorks Infresh, West Ryde
This small footprint store was opened a month or so ago and its mission is ‘we help turn food into meals’. This message appears on posters, overhead signage and aisle ends throughout the store. There’s a lot of large imagery of fresh food both externally and internally in an effort to reinforce the ‘infresh’ offer.
What we liked:
* Light, bright look and feel, low profile fresh fruit and veg section lends market feel and improves visibility, wide aisles made it easy to move around
* A good range of Asian meals and meal components (potentially due to the store’s proximity to Eastwood, a large Korean community) including pastes and dried fish
* Fresh made salads and pastas in the delicatessen available in a range of take-home size tubs, although the delicatessen itself was small and lacked a decent antipasto range
* In aisle signage delineating categories and categories segments was very clear. There wasn’t much aisle end navigation signage as there were really on 3 or 4 split centre store aisles
* In-store liquor section with a basic range of wines (in-store liquor offer in grocery is unusual in NSW due to licensing regulations).
What needs work:
* Delicatessen selection was largely what you’d see in a mainstream supermarket, only less of it
* Fresh-to-go sandwich and drink cabinet inside the front door – I assume this was meant to be a bit like the Munch offer in 7Eleven – was out of stocks and lacked signage, looked like it was to be decommissioned
* Quite a small range of fresh fruit and veg – doesn’t deliver on the ‘InFresh’ proposition and signage
* No ready meals or pre-prepared meals in the meat chillers, given the ‘we turn food into meals’ proposition
* Very small bread selection. All bread, crumpets, muffins chucked together in a single display bin
* Jury is out on the raw pallet offlocation displays of washing powder and other items … bargain basement feel.
Verdict:
Covered most of the basics. I’d go for the Asian meals, but there’s not a wide enough range for stock up shops and it’s not delicatessen enough for dinner tonight/entertaining shopping trips, particularly given the store’s proximity to Top Ryde City which even in its current incomplete renovated state has a WW, Aldi, Franklins, delicatessen and a dedicated Asian supermarket.
I’d use it a bit like an IGA … duck down the road to pick up some basic things you’ve run out of when you can’t be bothered dealing with shopping centre carparks and crowds.
Franklins, Top Ryde City
Given David Burton’s preview of the Franklin’s Top Ryde City store in Retail World recently I was expecting something a bit special. Sadly this was not the case. It’s quite similar to the Franklins St Ives Peter reviewed mid last year.
Entry is confusing as it’s way over on the left, with an open space on the right that I entered and was promptly told I’d come in through the express checkouts.
Their loyalty program signs are everywhere, and the checkout person asked the customers prior to me and asked me as well, whether we were members of their loyalty program or wanted to be. The customers ahead of me were signed up on the spot. The Franklins staff obviously got the memo about the loyalty program.
Cut case offlocation displays in aisles were the right idea to attract impulse purchase but the execution let them down … offlocation breakfast cereals in breakfast only prompt switch rather than incremental purchase, and unrelated displays in some aisles had obviously not been shopped. Better to put an offlocation display in a complementary category (eg savoury crackers next to cheese barges etc).
The low-profile bread area is quite small and actually makes the range look smaller, particularly given it was only one side of the aisle (international meals were on the other). The POS itself is quite dated looking.
On the bright side, there’s an entire aisle of gluten free products next to fruit and veg.
Verdict:
We’re still in the ‘80s.
And then there’s … Golden Banana
This was a bit of a pleasant surprise. Located in Top Ryde City shopping centre it looks like a standard fruit & veg shop from the front (it bills itself as a ‘fruit market’) but is actually more like a Harris Farm Market in both range and store footprint.
Huge range of fresh fruit and veg … an entire wall of Asian-style greens, and lots of fruits you don’t see very often like Kiwanos.
Chillers contained premium dips, yoghurts, cheeses, ice creams, and pasta brands. A dry store of several aisles contained the (by now ubiquitous, and apparently compulsory for this suburb) Asian meal components plus a large selection of fresh pastas.
A large delicatessen serviced antipasto and sliced meat needs, and there’s a separate pasta and salad bar at the front of the store for quick takeaway lunch trade.
At this stage Golden Banana looks like a one-off (I couldn’t find any online references to them as a chain) but it’s certainly a concept that could be franchised. Aside from Harris Farm its closest cousin would be something like the Colonial Fresh Markets in Westfield Doncaster.
Verdict:
This is a destination store for fresh fruit & veg but competes with the delicatessens for the gourmet dollar too … lots of interesting stuff to try. It would be even better if they had some recipe cards so you knew what to DO with some of the more obscure products. – Norrelle Goldring
