Plenty of logic behind layout of supermarket

Press, 25 July 1985, Page 16

Plenty of logic behind layout of supermarket

When shopping in a supermarket have you ever been tempted by the chocolate bars beside the counter when waiting at the checkout? Many of us have but few of us wonder about the way the rest of the supermarket is designed. Why is the fruit and vegetable corner generally the first big section to be encountered with the trolley, then the meat cabinet, baking goods, delicatessen, grocery lines, frozen food, biscuits, and finally those dreaded sweets? Mr Roy Neal, the design and planning manager for G.U.S., explains the intricacies of supermarket lay-out. “The first thing we' have to consider when planning a supermarket is that the most important person is the customer — particularly the lady customer — because if the woman is not

happy then she won’t come back. “She’s our first consideration and we plan a market bearing in mind what she is thinking.” Many women did not plan their meals until they knew what sort of vegetables were available so the fruit and vegetable counter was close to the entrance of the shop, said Mr Neal. “Then she moves along to the meat cabinet and chooses a meat to go with the vegetables she has bought. In between these two cabinets she will go down a few grocery aisles. “In Supervalue we do most of the grocery aisles the same. In each aisle we put something popular so Mum has to go down each aisle.” Biscuits usually went in the last aisle with frozen fo«d, he said. “We don’t want them to put biscuits on the bottom

(of the trolley) and break them all. We hope to keep the customer satisfied by not giving them broken biscuits.” About half way through the market is the delicatessen. Most women think of items in the delicatessen as extras for parties and “in summer she may use the delicatessen if she has bought a lettuce and wants cold meat.” Mr Neal said that the serviced areas such as the delicatessens and the fruit and vegetable counters were usually on the outside of the market. Frozen foods were in the last aisle so that the food stayed frozen until the customer reached home, he said. Mr Neal admitted that having sweets by the checkouts was a deliberate ploy to get people to buy. A more practical reason for having sweets and small

items such as batteries near the counters was that the size made them easy to steal, he said. “If we don’t put them fairly near the check-outs then the kids flog them.” If the shop was near a school then the problem was much worse. “We do catch a lot but for every one we catch there are a lot we don’t catch. We can’t afford to have expensive things pinched. We have to keep this sort of thing under control.” The lay-out of a supermarket was designed to be comfortable to the customer and also to encourage them to buy as much as possible. “We are not only there to please the customer, we are there to make a bob as well.” Mr Neal said that G.U.S. had a standards committee which kept a watch on the decor and cleanliness of all G.U.S. stores.