Exclusive: The thinking behind Coles’ revamped Chadstone flagship store

Coles has delivered its latest transformational flagship store through the group’s store renewal program.Located within Chadstone shopping centre, the largest shopping centre in Australia, the tweaked design comes as Vicinity Group invests in making Chadstone a renowned food destination in addition to being known as the nation’s “fashion capital.”Coles’ senior design and innovation manager Pete Rose described the project as turning a “tired shop” into an “incredible” one for the Chadstone shopper. Further, the new store provided Coles with a platform to innovate, a key focus for the supermarket giant.Trial and errorFor Coles, the ability to learn from the Chadstone store is key.“While we have delivered an incredible product, some of the innovations are really at ‘stage one’. We will no doubt use the learnings from this store as a springboard for future development,” Rose told Inside Retail in an exclusive interview.From a timing perspective, the project took just over 6 months with a soft launch in early 2024 followed by an official opening on March 6.Coles is using the store revamp to trial key concepts that it identifies as being important to the customer, including an elevated “fresh and healthy” offering, as well as greater “convenience” and “value” offerings.“In focussing on these areas, we have developed a new wellness destination, a revamped fresh produce department and an elevated, all-in-one convenience zone. Value plays a very important role throughout the entire store, so we have used various point-of-sale mechanics to draw customers’ attention,” Rose added.Collaboration for innovationTo minimise closure disruptions and in alignment with broader centre works, the project was completed incredibly quickly from inception to delivery by contracted independent partners as well as Coles’ dedicated in-house design, construction and operations teams.“Every stage was accelerated, including the design and documentation, innovation development and build periods,” Rose said. “This was achieved with the support of our partners at The General Store, TRG Architects and Mainbrace Construction, who were instrumental in making this happen.”Unlike most retail stores, supermarket layouts are based on an incredible amount of consumer and scientific research, so redesigning stores in this sector is limited by well-defined operational rules and procedures. The Chadstone revamp was about discovering small things to tweak to provide an enhanced overall customer experience.Danny Lattouf, partner and chief strategy officer at The General Store, told Inside Retail that it was about “finding differentiation in every possible place versus trying to look for a silver bullet or one big magical moment”. An example is the removal of chrome plating from grocery fixtures for sustainability reasons.“I would say that this is about half of the time a project of this scale would usually take,” Lattouf said. “So the innovation in ways of working was an important aspect to making it all happen well and in time.”He emphasised that “it was wildly fast”. To meet this shortened timeframe, Coles and The General Store had to develop new ways of collaborating.“Because we were in such a rush, they [Coles] wanted our creativity, but they wanted to leverage their knowledge for speed as well. So we did several working sessions with both creative teams in the room at the same time, literally scribbling over each other’s drawings,” Lattouf said.“The G[eneral] Store through that process was intentionally vulnerable. Having your work sketched over by another designer is not common practice. It’s not the kind of thing that most creatives are usually comfortable with. Egos [get] can be damaged, feelings can get hurt. That was definitely not the case in this instance.”But rather than focussing on where the ideas came from, both organisations were more focussed on how they would be executed.Tapping into Coles’ “intimate understanding of what they need to operate the space, what their customer has told them before” was vital to accelerating the design process, Lattouf said. Rose added that the collaboration sessions “were not only beneficial but incredibly fun. I do not believe we would have delivered the result we did without this level of collaboration”.Internally, the project involved “a huge amount” of cross-functional support. Most of the concepts brought to life in-store received input from category management, marketing, customer insights and operational teams.Lattouf noted that Coles’ has a “test and scale” mindset, so it can swiftly apply what is working in innovation and flagship stores like Chadstone across its network.“They’re very comfortable with getting it wrong, or getting it right and using that to their advantage, but their comfort with testing and trialling and making mistakes is awesome,” Lattouf said.A fruitful harvestA key element in the new store is the elevated fresh produce section, with a misted herb destination and new fixtures throughout the department, while a dedicated convenience zone marries all three elements that Coles identified as being important to customers: offering great value, fresh and convenient meal solutions.Similarly, a “wellness” destination unifies the retailer’s health vitamin, superfood and sports nutrition categories and includes over 100 new lines that the retailer is testing.The whole store features an updated interior design, which Rose describes as “significantly refined, beautifully detailed and featuring updated wayfinding for our customers” whilst still in keeping with the Coles standard.As for the reception of the concept by customers, Rose said it was too early to share hard numbers but “early signs however are really positive”.“We are getting a lot of great feedback and also learning a lot which is one of our main aims when we deliver any proof of concept,” Rose said.Further reading: How price scrutiny could impact Coles’ and Woolworths’ loyalty programs.