A store always under renovation

A mock-up market helps Supervalu fine-tune stores. All it's missing is a checkout.

By MATT McKINNEY, Star Tribune

Last update: January 5, 2008 - 9:35 PM

It may be the world's quietest supermarket -- there's no Muzak. No bustle of other shoppers. No screaming children.

No sound other than your own footfalls.

A 30,000-square-foot mock-up of something that feels a lot like a Cub Foods store sits tucked into the basement of Supervalu's new East View Innovation Center in Eden Prairie.

The mock-up, never open to the public, feels familiar yet eerie: from the white linoleum floor to the metal shelving to the two empty checkout lanes flanked by magazine racks.

It could pass for a movie set, but the test store has a more utilitarian purpose: This is where Supervalu fine-tunes the look and feel of its 2,500 real stores nationwide.

Nothing is left to chance.

"It's a big disruption to do things in a store and this will let you mess around without hurting the store," said Mike Buck, vice president of fresh foods merchandising.

Laying out the insides of a supermarket doesn't take a rocket scientist, but it does take up time and space to think of new ways to arrange products as holidays and seasons come and go. Or to see if a new design for a display table fits with existing tables. Or what the bakery would look like if it was rearranged.

The test supermarket was the first to see three innovations coming out of Supervalu this year, including a deli cart that holds all of the ingredients for a single meal, a spill-proof container for rotisserie chicken and a corner of the store where food is divided into the courses of a meal. Some stores already have seen the innovations arrive.

The innovations were the result of a consumer survey begun nearly two years ago at Albertson's Inc., the Boise, Idaho-based chain that Supervalu gobbled up in 2006. Customers were asked, among other things, to use disposable cameras supplied by the company to snap photos of their dinners each night, sending in the cameras when they were full.

Among the findings: 40 percent of the survey takers ate their dinners on paper plates.

Matt McKinney • 612-673-7329

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