Fast Five Shorts | Pro Or Con: Community Spaces Inside Grocery Stores?
In the latest edition of Omni Talk’s Retail Fast Five, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Mirakl, Simbe, Ocampo Capital and Scratch Event DJs Chris Walton and Anne Mezzenga discuss: Pro Or Con: Community Spaces Inside Grocery Stores?
For the full episode head here:https://youtu.be/xw-boSNx8kc
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Transcript
Giant Food introduced a first of its kind community space, according to Grocery Dive, the Giant food store located on Alabama Avenue southeast in Ward 8 of Washington, D.C.
Speaker A:a food desert in part because of its lack of supermarkets, According to the D.C.
Speaker A: ,: Speaker A:The multipurpose center, located to the left of the store's front entrance, provides health and wellness information and programming to the greater D.C.
Speaker A:area.
Speaker A:The healthy Healthy Living center is also prepared to offer an array of programs, including financial literacy, yoga classes, nutrition education and board meetings for nonprofits, jefferson said, noting that the space is free to use.
Speaker A:Chris, are you pro or con retailers setting aside space in their stores for things like community spaces the floor?
Speaker B:Not at all and not at all.
Speaker B: In fact, I'm going to start: Speaker B:I don't think I'm going to go full Walton rant, but I'm going to.
Speaker A:Go, oh boy, let's hear it.
Speaker A:Let's hear it.
Speaker B:I actually loathe these ideas.
Speaker B:And as soon as I hear yoga classes in any announcement and I'm out like, I'm out like, like Cartman from South Park.
Speaker B:You know, yoga is code for or Namaste is code for I have anxiety.
Speaker B:You know this.
Speaker B:That's how I feel about this headline.
Speaker B:And the reason being these community spaces.
Speaker B:One, they're just really hard to program year round.
Speaker B:Two, they don't bring in any additional revenue, so it's a complete waste of space.
Speaker B:They generally don't draw any incremental traffic, which is why they end up being unused or just unprogrammed for the most part.
Speaker B:We've seen them come and go as ideas in various forms of our eight years of doing Omni Talk.
Speaker B:And I hate to say it, but you know what we never hear about?
Speaker B:We never hear about the second community center at another store rolling out based on the success of the first one.
Speaker B:I tried to think about that.
Speaker B:Of all the times we've heard about similar ideas, I can't think of one happening.
Speaker B:So I don't know.
Speaker B:But you know, take me, get me off the ledge and tell me where I'm right.
Speaker B:Tell me where I'm wrong.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I just.
Speaker B:I just don't like this idea.
Speaker B:I think it's silly.
Speaker A:I think that the points you bring up are valid.
Speaker A:The key thing here, I think, is to, for, at least for me, as I was considering this, is like, do we need to think specifically about the Location of these spaces versus just like broader, like rolling this out to every Giant food location in the country.
Speaker A:Like, that does not make sense to me.
Speaker A:But they're in a food desert.
Speaker A:You know, it's not necessarily like, you know, $100 a square foot prime retail location.
Speaker A:I think that I agree with you in that, like, this space being free to use and, and no programing around it, like that could be a problem.
Speaker A:Like, you and I have seen those spaces fail.
Speaker A:You're absolutely correct.
Speaker A:But I do think, like, if you look closely at like what Walmart's been doing with health hubs in the spaces, like trying to figure out, like, I would be focusing more if I was Giant on like, how do you utilize.
Speaker A:It was used as like a COVID testing center.
Speaker A:Like, how do you figure out how to make this a place where.
Speaker A:If I live in a food desert, I may not be going to Giant.
Speaker A:I might be just going to my local bodega or whatever I can get my hands on.
Speaker A:But if I can go there and meet a friend for coffee, I can do, you know, I can get a mammogram like Walmart was offering or, you know, even even get a flu shot or something like that.
Speaker B:Like, that's different though.
Speaker B:Like, that's, that's.
Speaker B:Yeah, that's different though.
Speaker B:That's why I put that in different bucket.
Speaker B:Yeah, there's revenue with that stuff.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Well, and I even think that, you know, you know, you could still argue that if I, that I wouldn't have gone to Giant unless I could accomplish more than one thing in one space.
Speaker A:And that does bring in an incremental revenue.
Speaker A:Not for that specific, you know, square footage of the community space.
Speaker A:But it does bring.
Speaker A:Bring somebody into a Giant, which if I'm carrying on on this thread, could potentially put them in a stronger position once the dollar store sectors continue to start to add things like produce and start to like, kind of take up and, you know, everybody's trying to fight this food desert problem.
Speaker A:You know, could that still position Giant is like, well, I can, you know, I could do a yoga class there.
Speaker A:I don't like the yoga example, but I could do something.
Speaker B:Yeah, right.
Speaker A:I could accomplish more things.
Speaker A:I think you're a little harsh on the whole yoga thing.
Speaker A:Be like, I think you went too far on yoga.
Speaker A:I love yoga, so I will, you know, I'll fight you to the death on that one.
Speaker B:You're gonna take yoga at the Giant grocery store.
Speaker A:That's where you get to yoga.
Speaker A:Yoga at the Gian grocery store.
Speaker A:Some people might, I don't know.
Speaker A:I, I think there has to be some considerations made though for the locations of these spaces.
Speaker A:No, it is not an application I'd roll out, you know, chain wide across my whole region.
Speaker A:But I think in some of these locations there, the store is the community for that space.
Speaker A:And so I think that there's, there's testing.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:So I want to take this argument, I want to spin it a little bit.
Speaker B:So like, here's the thing, here's the thing.
Speaker B:Like, I actually, I agree with you.
Speaker B:Like the locations of these types of ideas matter.
Speaker B:But my question, my question comes down to this.
Speaker B:How are you in a food desert if this is inside a grocery store?
Speaker B:Like, so if this is a great idea for the community, why don't you just put it in the community where everyone can, you know, learn from it and benefit from it like a community center is traditionally done versus making this something that a grocery store is doing and won't end up putting the effort towards it because they're not going to get the payoff in the long run because it's going to end up not being programmed and not being vacant so that it doesn't feel like some more food in there store should be owning.
Speaker B:Yes, it seems like make more food accessible and available to people and easier to get and draw them in that way.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker A:You also, I mean, I just, I think there's more, there's more to it than that.
Speaker A:I mean, there's tax credits, there's things that, you know, like, I want to.
Speaker B:I know this building.
Speaker A:Like, I think that again, like in.
Speaker B:There'S murals and we didn't even talk about that.
Speaker B:There's a mural designed by an Emmy award winner, which I was like the award winner designing a mural.
Speaker B:But anyway, I got laughing on that one.
Speaker A:I don't know.
Speaker B:Yeah, so.
Speaker B:So I don't know.
Speaker B:I don't think I got convinced by the argument, but it was a very fun discussion.
Speaker B:Very fun discussion.
