Milk Next To Cereal? Piggly Wiggly Rethinks Design

Piggly Wiggly, a chain of Southern supermarkets, just opened what it boasts is the first "intuitively designed" supermarket in the country.

Located in a high-end retail center in Myrtle Beach, S.C., the Piggly Wiggly at The Market Commons is organized by the way the company thinks people naturally shop, not the way supermarkets are traditionally laid out.

For example, items used together in certain meals--ground beef, chips, buns and beer--are grouped together in a way that makes perfect sense to anyone throwing a barbecue. Haven't decided yet if you want to have fresh corn on the cob, frozen niblets or canned corn? No matter--they're all right next to each other, not at opposite ends of the store. And cereal is sold right next to milk.

"In today's competitive market, we felt it was time to take a creative approach that will give people the opportunity to shop the way they think, and have fun while doing it," the Charleston, S.C.-based company says in its release. The new store also includes homey design touches like wood flooring, soft lighting and an open floor plan. What's more, the company says it has done so while lowering energy use--using special lighting and insulation, which it says will save more than one million kilowatt hours of electricity each year.

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The company didn't return phone calls, but industry experts say that while Piggly Wiggly may be striking just the right consumer chord-convenience, there's a lot that can backfire.

"Other companies have tried this. And it's great that Piggly Wiggly is listening to its customers, and inferring what they need," says Ted Zittell, a retail consultant with McMillan/Doolittle in Chicago, which specializes in branding and design. But it's a tricky balance. "Consumers are actually more conservative than you'd think," he says. "Everyone is delighted when you make things easier, and following the decision tree they're using at that moment. But if someone just ran in for some beer, and not everything else you'd serve at a barbecue, they can be annoyed if it isn't where they expect to find it."

The trick is creating a layout that works for all different kinds of shopping trips. "Something that you think is fantastic when you're doing a quick fill-in shop could prove annoying when you're there to do the major shopping for the week," he says.

Many of Piggly Wiggly's innovations focus on prepared foods that make cooking faster and easier--including curbside pickup for prepared meals. The store also includes a Dream Dinner franchise where as many as two months' worth of oven-ready meals can be prepared. (Rival Publix started testing Aprons Make-Ahead Meals in Jacksonville, Fla. last fall.)

And while convenience may be the right chord, it's hard to say if this is the right time. At the moment, consumers are spending a lot of time fretting about the rising price of eggs and bananas, so that many stores are setting out more bargain bins. In that environment, how relevant will a store with an on-site sommelier be--the new Piggly Wiggly stocks more than 1,500 wine varieties?

"There are still a lot of shoppers in the upper end," Zittell says. "But I can't imagine it's something it is going to replicate in large numbers." Theoretically, there's no reason the same concepts couldn't be adapted at value prices, he says, but so much of a grocery store's layout depends on accounting--the layout has to generate sufficient sales volume.

Most notably, though, Zittell says this is just a little more evidence that when it comes to innovation, small regional players are leading the way. Because stores like Piggly Wiggly, H-E-B and Wegmans are privately held, they are freer to innovate in a way that often pays off for shoppers, he says.

"People keep saying, 'How will they ever compete with the cost advantages that the Wal-Marts of the world have?' and yet they keep coming up with better ways to add value for shoppers. No one knows local demands better than local chains."

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