The essential ingredients in food retailing

The essential ingredients in food retailingAs digital disruption evolves, food must play a new role in creating community – and that offers new opportunities for food retailers, says Mark Landini, creative director at Landini Associates.Speaking to a packed crowd at the recent Property Council’s retail breakfast in Brisbane, Landini said food retailers need to understand how technology is transforming the world we live in.”Food is not changing, but what is happening around food is changing,” Landini explains.”Ever since we crawled out of the primeval sludge, we have sat around the camp fire together to eat, tell stories and commune.”The mobile phone has fundamentally changed the way we live – it distracts us and is destroying our natural communication skills and sense of community.”Food is one of the last things that glues us together as a community. Food needs to step up – and to play the role of reconnecting us as human beings.”Landini, who has worked with brands including Sass & Bide, Jurlique, T2, ALDI, David Jones and McDonalds, says the experience people expect of food retailers is also rapidly evolving. He says the “birth of fashion as a high-quality experience” means consumers now expect attractive, well-lit stores with beautiful product on display.Retailers like Zara, H&M and Uniqlo have “retrained people to have a different expectation of value” – one no longer based on price.This shift in expectation is understood by ALDI, which recently commissioned Landini to redesign its stores – and since then “sales and loyalty have jumped significantly”.This shopping experience is something that everyone now expects, and Landini says the “removal of class and demographics from the shopping experience will have an impact on everything.”Another equally important driver is the “yearning for simplicity”. Landini points to the explosion of food trucks in America, which specialise in one particular product, and McDonald’s decision to simplify its menu.”ALDI understands this trend, which is why it has curated the product selection for its customers. If someone wants baked beans, they don’t need to think about which to choose – they know someone has done it for them.”Food has also become cool, with the advent of the celebrity chef changing the way people think about the way they cook and eat.Retailers can use design to tap into this trend, he says. “Look at McDonalds. We made them cool again with design, and that’s challenged perceptions.”Landini Associates is currently working with QIC, to help curate the retail experience from “macro to micro level”, Landini says.”While lots of landlords just build boxes and fill them with tenants, QIC understands that landlords need to think more like fashion retailers, to control and curate more of the experience and manage every detail for customers. That’s the future of food retailing.”