The Cobham Sainsbury’s Lab store is setting new standards with innovative shopping solutions.
- Simon Roberts, CEO, introduced a “Next Level” strategy aiming to make Sainsbury’s the top choice for UK food shoppers.
- The store features enhanced space for food items, improving customer accessibility to a wider range of products.
- Innovative product placement allows more straightforward shopping, aligning chilled and frozen items for convenience.
- Focus on efficient checkout experiences with new technology and hybrid solutions, providing expanded consumer choices.
In an ambitious stride toward revolutionizing retail experiences, Sainsbury’s Cobham Lab store exemplifies the “Next Level” strategy spearheaded by CEO Simon Roberts. Aiming to solidify its position as the UK’s leading food retailer, Sainsbury’s is transforming its store layouts to prioritize food volume growth and improve customer access to diverse product offerings. Currently, only 15% of its stores showcase the full food range, but the company is set on altering this statistic through strategic enhancements across 180 high-potential locations over a three-year period.
This store serves as a testbed with over 100 active experiments evaluating potential rollouts for Sainsbury’s future strategies. One such initiative is the expanded space for fresh produce such as fruits, vegetables, meats, and seafood, presenting them in a modernized, customer-friendly environment. A distinctive layout effort includes adjacent placement of chilled and frozen items, such as placing langoustines next to fresh fish, thereby eliminating the need for extensive navigation across the store. This novel arrangement highlights a customer-centric approach, shifting from traditional supermarket layouts to intuitive and accessible configurations.
The Cobham store has introduced a “fish counter on a wall” concept, designed to decrease waste while offering an expanded assortment at reduced costs. This approach has reportedly resulted in significant category growth by maximizing product availability. Another noteworthy feature rapidly gaining traction is the dedicated ‘Free From’ sections, accommodating specific dietary needs in a singular, convenient location—an intuitive and logical layout adjustment that, while seemingly simple, marks a bold departure from standard supermarket practices.
Further innovations in the Cobham Lab store include a revamped beers, wines, and spirits section, which now contains the full spectrum of the retailer’s offerings in this category. The layout has been designed with an awareness of retail crime, utilizing open and bright spaces monitored by staff. This section includes innovative smart shelves capable of detecting unusual behavior, such as attempts to remove multiple bottles simultaneously, thereby ensuring security without compromising the shopping experience.
Efforts to modernize checkout experiences are also evident in the Cobham Lab store. Here, Sainsbury’s is trialing hybrid checkout systems alongside traditional manned tills and Smart Shop options. The hybrid solution integrates additional space for larger trolley items, reflecting a shift towards increased flexibility and customer choice in transaction methods. Although these innovations are still being tested, early feedback indicates positive customer reception, emphasizing Sainsbury’s commitment to aligning technological advancements with consumer needs.
Enhancements extend beyond food and checkout systems, touching upon fashion as well. The clothing sections are seeing significant upgrades with improved styling, fixtures, and presentation to capture the attention of customers engaged in extensive shopping trips. This modern retail approach aims to draw in style-conscious consumers by offering a compelling intersection of affordability and quality.
In alignment with its broader cost-efficiency objectives, Sainsbury’s has set a target of £1 billion in annual savings by 2027. These efforts build upon the £1.3 billion in savings achieved over the past three years. Strategic adjustments in logistics, such as optimizing warehouse layouts to reduce replenishment time and frequency, underpin this initiative. While the Cobham store remains a pilot site, the insights gained from its experimentation are crucial to shaping Sainsbury’s future operations.
The Cobham Lab store exemplifies Sainsbury’s vision to innovate and enhance customer experiences, paving the way for future advancements.
