How innovative store design is reshaping the shopping experience
Supermarket design has come a long way from the days of narrow aisles, harsh lighting and drab colour palettes, when stores were designed for function rather than aesthetics. However, changing customer expectations and increased competition in the omnichannel world means conventional grocers need to elevate their physical spaces now more than ever.
With more shopping happening online, for example, the focus for many retailers is on efficiently fulfilling orders, “which is kind of impersonal and disengaged from the store,” notes April Matthews, retail designer at King Retail Solutions (KRS).
“To balance that, retailers are trying to make being in stores a more interesting experience,” she adds. “So, the decor is getting nicer and they’re creating a more personalized and entertaining experience. They want customers to feel it was worth the effort of getting off their phones and getting out of their cars and being in the store.”
There’s an opportunity for retailers to level up their store designs to ensure they resonate with today’s choice-filled shoppers. Here’s a look at supermarket design trends from home and abroad that can draw customers in and keep them coming back.
Grocery retail as hospitality
One trend that’s gaining traction is the shift towards hospitality-inspired store design. While convenience and efficiency are still important, there’s an opportunity to create environments that invite customers to linger.
“Zones that are customer facing will become more experiential. For instance, more stores will have cafés that give customers a place to sit and enjoy a coffee, gelato, or even beer or wine,” says Seth Maddox, creative director at KRS. “Offering these types of experiences will continue to hold true because grocers have to elevate the in-store shopping experience.”
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A prime example of this shift is L’OCA Quality Market, which opened a flagship store in Sherwood Park, near Edmonton earlier this year. The specialty store, designed by KRS, combines a full grocery assortment with two restaurants, freshly roasted coffee, wood-fired pizza, an expansive deli and more. The store also features a demonstration kitchen for cooking classes and seasonal events. “The entire concept was built around the idea of inviting people in—not just to shop for groceries, but to enjoy a variety of food and beverage experiences,” says Maddox.
Adds Matthews: “They thought of grocery as hospitality rather than retail, and they’re really trying to connect with people and make it a personal experience.”
Italian Centre Shop takes a similar approach, embedding a community-focused environment into the design of all five of its Alberta locations. “Our stores are all gathering places,” says Anthony De Santis, the grocer’s director of operations and business development. “We have cafés in all our stores, so everyone gathers, has coffee together and shops. We try to give everybody a cultural experience.”
Design elements throughout Italian Centre Shop locations further enhance the European-inspired atmosphere. The Sherwood Park store, for example, has shelving that mimics Roman aqueducts, as well as cathedral-style wall fixtures and flooring from Italy. And since Sherwood Park is a sports-loving community, that theme is woven into details such as soccer-inspired tiles and bocce ball court-inspired aisle signs.
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With each store, the retailer aims to capture the spirit of the community, “but it’s always Italian and European themed,” says De Santis. “We’ve heard it many times when people are sitting in our cafés, ‘I close my eyes and I feel I’m in a café in Rome.’”
Bernhard Heiden, chief strategy officer, Schweitzer and creative director, Interstore, based in Northern Italy, is observing the hospitality trend in Europe and North America. “In Europe, everybody wants to sit in a supermarket; the French and Irish supermarket companies, in particular, learned to incorporate gastronomy,” he says. “Hospitality is becoming more important, and stores have more of a food court feeling … It’s no longer a boring supermarket. It’s hospitality and community with a big fresh component.”
Going green in grocery
Another growing design trend is the focus on sustainability. Many grocers are looking at how to create more environmentally friendly stores, from building with eco-friendly materials to installing energy-efficient systems.
One international example of the sustainability shift is EDEKA’s Store of the Future, a pilot store that recently opened in Nauen, Germany. Sustainability is integrated into nearly every aspect of construction, design and operations, with Interstore and Schweitzer responsible for EDEKA’s store design and shopfitting. “It’s not 100% sustainable, but everything that is currently possible [in sustainability] is in this store,” says Heiden.
The building, for example, was constructed with sustainable wood and natural insulating materials. Waste heat from the Waterloop refrigeration system is used to heat the store, which Heiden says is not air-conditioned. With Interstore and Schweitzer’s flexible shopfitting systems, nothing is fixed to the floor, which will make it easy for the grocer to continually adapt the space at lower costs and reduced material consumption.
The EDEKA Store of the Future concept was based on “a less is more” philosophy, explains Heiden. “From a signage and graphic standpoint, everything is reduced so only the product is in focus and not the decor and design elements in the store.”
Elevating the fresh experience
Fresh departments have long been a focal point in grocery stores, but the emphasis on fresh foods continues to gain momentum. Retailers are not only offering a wide range of fresh products, but they’re also designing their stores to spotlight fresh offerings in creative and engaging ways.
“We continue to see the elevation of fresh, with fresh departments being given a lot more prominence, effort and investment,” says Vince Guzzi, managing partner of Watt International, a retail strategy and design consultancy in Toronto. “For example, in fresh, there are a lot of speciality fixtures—long gone are the days when you just dump apples in a big bin. There is a lot more creativity in terms of how you stage the product to romance it a bit more.”
Guzzi also believes once a consumer decides to shop in store, they arrive with heightened expectations, particularly in the fresh department. “Food shopping, unlike other types of shopping, still involves a very physical, tactile experience,” he says. “I want to see the tomato I’m choosing and not rely on someone in a warehouse to do it for me. Once consumers are in the store, their expectations are, ‘let me learn, let me interact, let me discover.’”
READ: Five ways to give your produce department a boost
Jean-Pierre Lacroix, founder and president of Toronto-based Shikatani Lacroix Design (SLD), agrees grocers need to think strategically about how to amplify fresh. One way is through expanded home-meal replacement (HMR) sections, which are often strategically placed in the fresh department. “Home-meal replacement is a great strategy, as retailers can gain additional purchasing occasions and increase basket size for customers.”
Beyond HMR, Lacroix points to an IGA Extra location in Saint-Laurent, Que. as a prime example of a forward-thinking fresh department. Since 2017, the store has been selling certified organic produce grown on a rooftop farm using green design and infrastructure solutions. Once harvested, the produce is displayed in the store under the banner “Frais du toit” (fresh from the roof), while a TV provides a live feed from the roof. “We’re seeing fresh being taken to the next level,” says Lacroix.
Setting the stage for food theatre
In tandem with the trend of elevating the fresh department is the rise of food theatre, which transforms food shopping into an interactive, engaging experience.
L’OCA Quality Market, for example, has a variety of gourmet food offerings made in house from scratch, and much of the food preparation is on display for customers to see. Through design elements such as distinct food zones and open kitchen areas, shoppers can watch the culinary team at work. “It’s all about food presentation and food theatre, making the shopper feel like they’re not just shopping, but almost collaborating on what they’re putting in their carts,” says Matthews from KRS.
Lacroix gives the example of a supermarket chain his firm is working with in China. The seafood department features a selection of fresh fish swimming around in tanks, including cod, sea bass, lobsters and shrimp, as well as already-butchered fish on ice. “It’s like going to a big aquarium,” says Lacroix.
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The experience doesn’t stop there. Customers can select a piece of fish, have it filleted in front of them and then take it to a nearby cooking station, where it’s prepared to order along with noodles or vegetables. “They take fresh to a whole new level that North America doesn’t even come close to,” Lacroix says, noting fish sections are often tucked away in the back corner of stores. His advice to Canadian grocers? “Get serious about fish … There is an opportunity to reinvent the customer journey and create true centres of excellence.”
Storytelling by design
As the focus on fresh and healthy eating grows, consumer education is increasingly relevant, notes Brian Bettencourt, senior creative directive at Watt International. Grocers, for example, are putting more effort into promoting better eating habits through the integration of technology. “The digital display component is huge,” he says. “Being able to bring real-time information into the store is important, whether it’s through promotions or personalized messaging based on consumer preferences.”
KRS’s Maddox also emphasizes the role of storytelling in elevating the fresh experience. “You can’t charge [a premium] for an organic apple unless you tell the story behind it, to some extent,” he says. A big part of what KRS helps retail clients do is tell that story, whether it’s through imagery, signage or copy that explains the product’s origins or health benefits. “It’s often about local farms that they’re getting product from or snippets about health and nutrition,” Maddox says.
While the integration of digital signage is a key part of modern store design, creating compelling content is equally important—an opportunity that’s often missed. “We’ve seen the first generation where everybody jumped on the bandwagon and put screens in highly visible areas in their stores. But, they ended up [playing] HGTV because they forgot an important part: the content,” says Guzzi from Watt International. He advises retailers to be purposeful about their content and storytelling, “versus a bright screen that is designed to capture people’s attention.”
Beyond signage, layout and product adjacencies also play a role in storytelling. For instance, bringing proteins together with fresh produce and shelf-stable items—along with a digital component—can showcase meal ideas that fit consumers’ lifestyles. “You’re making people’s lives easier and giving them meal ideas for the week,” says Bettencourt. “They’re going to think, ‘you’re really listening to me.’”
This article was first published in Canadian Grocer’s December2024/January 2025 issue.
