Beverage Luxuries at Your Local Grocery
Certain grocery stores take on a unique shopper’s convenience method: implementing pop-up coffee shops within the overall space. Separate from the coffee/tea aisles, pop-up style shops that feature a slightly different menu and a generally smaller operation. When I first observed this new trend, I enjoyed it as a luxury or perk rather than a necessity. I used my previous casual observations as a cornerstone for my grocery store project. The focus of this observation was on the purpose and consumer utilization of this extra convenience. A traditional stand-alone coffee shop features a range of seating options to encourage patrons to spend time in the shop outside of the purchase of the coffee. Grocery store coffee shops sometimes add seating to imitate this tradition, but is it as successful as its stand-alone counterparts? With coffee shop structures built into the larger grocery store floor plan, with seating included, this traditional coffee shop mindset can easily be adjusted to fit a different purpose.
This observational assignment took me to stores that identified as either grocery or gourmet shops. Giant, Safeway, Little Red Fox, Whole Foods, and Dean & Deluca were included in this study. Giant and Safeway featured Starbucks shops within their structures, and the remaining three used their own brand to create a coffee shop. From store to store, there were multiple similarities and differences, in terms of seating, patronage, and layout. To create a constant, I chose to make each visit during the “afternoon pick me up” time, between 2-3 PM.
Being the only observation in the middle of a college campus, the visit to Whole Foods Market in Foggy Bottom featured a unique situation. Usually in the later afternoon, Whole Foods is packed with patrons rushing to get some healthier fast food. Since the waiting line is usually very long, the line for the coffee shop serves an unspoken purpose of being the store’s express line. To the left of the coffee shop is a variety of hot food options, and the Whole Foods has a large cafeteria-like seating area for any patrons of the store, coffee shop included. For this reason, my observation of the seating area lead me to the conclusion that most patrons of Whole Foods Market use the seating area to eat a meal rather than sip a cup of coffee with an acquaintance, although I did see that at one or two tables, but it wasn’t trending. Other stores in this project had similar observational conclusions in terms of what the seating areas were used for.
Giant and Safeway both had smaller Starbucks shops located within the stores, and the design of the two shops were fairly similar, likely due to the fact that both coffee shops were the same company. Both stores were originally grand in size, with a small coffee shop positioned near the entrance to attract potential customers. In terms of seating usage, both shops had sparsely utilized seating, but in observing the passersby between the aisles, shoppers used their convenient shopping cart cup holders to sip a freshly made beverage while they shop. Where the two Starbucks visits differed greatly was in their seating arrangements. The Giant I chose to visit in Mclean, VA, had two tables and four chairs, while the Safeway in Georgetown, DC had multiple tables and chairs both adjacent to the counter and in a separate area outside the automatic sliding doors directly to the left of the Starbucks. Considering the notion of a grocery store being a very mobile and kinetic chore, the seating areas weren’t used as much as your average standalone coffee shop would be.
Both stores under the category of “gourmet” (Little Red Fox and Dean & Deluca) had prepared food as well as drink options, in separate areas of the store. For this reason, the seating areas provided are unspokenly present for anyone who purchases something made-to-order. At Little Red Fox--the smallest of the store visits--there was a real cozy and community focused nature that shone through in the rest of the store’s layout. For this reason, this store featured the most patrons drinking only beverages, instead of being accompanied by food, or eating food only. Dean & Deluca had a beautifully laid out espresso bar, with an exclusively outdoor seating area to accommodate the older, original layout of the building in this downtown area. Unique in comparison to the other stores was Dean & Deluca’s outdoor only seating. When the weather’s temperature rises, the espresso bar seating is an oasis-like destination for passing tourists. This seating area was also the most used of all five stores.
This project could have yielded deeper results if interacting with patrons and customers was possible. Making assumptions about those I observed wasn’t as ideal as getting the chance to ask them questions about how having the option of ready-made beverages helps or potentially hurts their overall grocery shopping experience.