The next trend is wholefoods

We saw “whole dollar pricing” and “bright, clean and uncluttered” as a couple of the key themes emerging in retail environments globally this year. Well, my pick for 2010 is the move to creating the store experiences around “organic, whole food and farmers market” as well as “comfortable, well worn and well lived in”. It will be about allowing shoppers to experience simpler and very relaxed store formats.

Many of the best trends start in small sectors of the market, by people who are passionate about what they do. The passion for the idea often supersedes the basic business tenets needed to start a business, or commercialise an idea. This passion is the energy that feeds the growth of the business and compensates for any possible lack of business discipline and planning.

A colleague and I were able to see and feel this at the SmartCompany awards in Melbourne last week. The things start-ups consider normal, things that are just the canvas against which entrepreneurs operate against, are often viewed as innovative by larger and more established players.

These different ideas form into trends only by being observed in many different and seemingly unrelated sectors, countries and cultures. Eventually this “pattern recognition” hits a tipping point and we can see just how well the innovations or trends have been accepted by shoppers. It’s then that we roll them out as part of planned and financed retail business model.

The farmers markets and whole foods movement is a great example of the growth of a trend. While it’s become a very successful business model for food retailing in North America, drawing retailers and manufacturers into the space fast, it’s only really started to touch the early adopting shoppers in Europe lately. While many Europeans will tell you that the farmers market, feestdag markts, rural marché never went away, they may be looking through rose tinted glasses in some major cities.

But now we’re seeing these vibrant retailing experiences back in the big cities, many via independently owned whole foods stores. Large, slightly scruffy stores with basic crate, box and farm pallet style merchandising, they are dotted with product you can taste before you buy, with hand written chalk board signage. They tend to be towards the outskirts of the city, where rents are low and older wooden floored, high ceilinged brick warehouses exist.

While some are actually owned by farmers, most are owned by retailers and make for great destination shopping trips on weekends or during school holidays. The grey army shop there frequently. When you’re only feeding one or two in the household, the ability to but high quality in single units makes for great meals and less waste… plus the grey army aren’t time poor!

In Australia and New Zealand we are in a similar position to Europe, not having any whole food retailing models of any scale. We have high quality delis, regional fresh food retailers operating food barns and Woolworths Thomas Dux as the only high-end “greengrocers”. Expect to see lots of growth in this sector as we bring these simpler, rural cues into fresh food retailing. Also expect to see these cues appear in more mainstream food retailing.

Away from grocery retailing, and in many of the out of home food outlets, the “cocooning” we so love in our homes is now coming to the fore. As an example of this there is a very large coffee shop near the Sydney Harbour Bridge called Lounge. It’s about four times the size of your average coffee shop, and is strewn with miss matched older furniture, all pre-loved and very comfortable to sink into. The serving area, with a coffee machine barista and glass fronted self-serve fridges, is right in the middle of the shop and creates the feel of a large home kitchen. Magazines, papers, three flat screen TVs playing ONE HD and other “comfort noise” keeps the place homely.

It’s frequented five days a week by a group of Sydney entrepreneurs who park their BMW and Porsche convertibles outside and sit down for long breakfasts. It really is a very relaxed and homely shopping experience. A one off?

Well, Starbucks is the largest coffee shop chain in the world. While it may not have made a success of Australia, the retailer does understand creating relaxed coffee drinking and cake eating stores in other major markets.

Having adopted a great model that has worked well in the US and Europe, it is now challenging its original formulaic approach and introducing much more laid back store layouts. These store layouts will look to mimic the “cocooning” we all report as being important to us in the increasing “down time” we spend in our homes.

Starbucks will create this feel with worn paint work and pre-loved furniture, much the way the whole food retail chains in the US replicate the old chalk board and hand written signage through pre-printed POS that still retains the rustic look.

These two traits stem from a new need for relaxation and retreat that has been a product of the GFC, which shook our work environments and made us happy to be home.

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In his role as CEO of CROSSMARK, Kevin Moore looks at the world of retailing from grocery to pharmacy, bottle shops to car dealers, corner store to department stores. In this insightful blog, Kevin covers retail news, ideas, companies and emerging opportunities in Australia, NZ, the US and Europe. His international career in sales and marketing has seen him responsible for business in over 40 countries, which has earned him grey hair and a wealth of expertise in international retailers and brands. CROSSMARK Asia Pacific is Australasia’s largest provider of retail marketing services, consulting to and servicing some of Australasia’s biggest retailers and manufacturers.