Creating Community Experiences: Q&A with Kevin Kelley

Experiential retail stores such as the recently opened Northgate Market Mercado store in Costa Mesa, California, provide the kind of memorable experiences that consumers crave, said retail architect Kevin Kelley, co-founder of Shook Kelley and author of Irreplaceable: How to Create Extraordinary Places That Bring People Together.

He argues that retail stores and other physical spaces can help fulfill humanity’s essential need for both entertainment and for community with their fellow humans. He is scheduled to discuss this topic, with real-world examples from Northgate and other food retailers, at a session called “Retail’s Hidden Strength: Convening Consumers in Place” on Monday, June 24, beginning at 1:15 p.m. on the Big Stage at the Summer Fancy Food Show.

He recently spoke with SFA News Daily about his planned presentation and his thoughts on creating unique, unforgettable retail experiences.

What are some of the lessons that you hope retailers will take away from your presentation?

I think everybody is trying to figure out how to survive and thrive in this world of retail consolidation, with tech disruption left and right. When you have inflation, and uncertainty in the world, everything kind of knee-jerks to price, and it’s hard if you’re a small or medium or local or regional operator to survive.

We show retailers how to compete on other dimensions. On one level, humans have a need to acquire things at the lowest price, but once they get that, they look for other qualities, and other human dimensions such as joy, delight, discovery, adventure, visualization, and the sense of belonging. We have 31 years of case studies where we show that those dimensions are very desirable and create big payoffs for our customers all over the country.

The book is about the power of place and what experiences can do for us. We have off-the-chart examples, and what I try to show audiences is that competing on price is a slugfest. It’s not a fun race, even for the winner. We try to show them that there’s a different race, and we show them plenty of examples.

So that approach works even in an environment where customers are feeling so much financial pressure from rising costs?

Yes, it works even better to some degree because people may make sacrifices in other areas. They might cancel the European vacation, the ski trip, or the purchase of the Skidoo, and they will start to look for other indulgences and other rewards. We’re just that way as humans, and food in particular is one of the things we reward ourselves with in tough times. We look for compensating balance, and grocery stores provide that.

Wegmans, for example, actually does well in many categories during recessions. Of course, we can’t gouge our customers. We can't take advantage of them. We have to really build trust with them and make them feel good about the value exchange that’s happening.

What role does technology such as mobile connectivity and artificial intelligence play in creating physical store environments?

We’ve been in this era where we kind of pit physical stores and digital technologies against each other. But 10 years from now, or maybe even five years from now, we won’t be separating those things as much. ‘Omnichannel’ is kind of an overused word, and ‘phygital’ is not a pretty word, but these things are starting to blend in seamlessly.

I think the future is probably going to have some connection between the phone in our purse or pocket and the shelf, and we’ve seen some fascinating technologies around that. Our knee-jerk reaction is to push coupons and sales on customers, but the store is not just a place to get your customers’ data. It’s a new medium to tell brand stories much in the way that TV became a vehicle to build a brand. A store is a place with a captive audience inside, and it can become a medium for entertainment.

It's really about rethinking the store, and I feel like we, including me, have had it wrong. We hadn’t really looked at this box like the box that sits in the living room. We have a box that sits in the neighborhood, where thousands or hundreds of thousands of customers go through in a week. We have a really great opportunity to build brands in the stores.

Can you share some anecdotes about retailers that have done things with their stores that have caught your eye?

One example I will show is Northgate Markets’ new Mercado concept, which is having astronomical sales increases. It is a gathering place for hundreds of thousands of people, and it’s really built around authentic Mexican food. It taps into customers’ need for adventure and discovery around food and learning about and sharing other cultures. More than anything, it's a celebration of not only food and not only culture, but community. It's an amazing success story.

I will also show Niemann Harvest Market, which is [Niemann Foods President and CEO] Rich Niemann’s concept. We developed the name and prototype concept for that and built some of them. We just opened one in Indianapolis that is pretty amazing. We’ll show how he’s competing, not on price, not on variety, not on scale, not on reach, but around the idea of small family farms, and building an incredible brand around what farms mean to us, and it’s an authentic story because Rich is a rancher.

The third story that I am going to show is Freson Bros. out of Canada. They are an amazing story. They started in the ’50s with one little, tiny butcher shop, and they built a chain that did great until the big international chains came in and surrounded them and pummeled them on price. To be honest, they just don’t have the scale or the money to compete on price. So, we really had to get creative and dig into the family history. We tapped into the butcher heritage of the family, and their love of bread. They have incredible bread, and it just proves the point that quality sells. People love hearing this story, even when I present it to tech audiences, because they’re so excited to see that humanity still has a place. I think it will be something we all want to have in our lives.

Is there anything else that you're looking forward to at the Fancy Food Show yourself?

I go to conferences all over the country and I study the human body and how our senses work. Each of us has a kind of an internal battery that gets worn out by information overload, and trade shows are one of the hardest places for humans to handle. But the Fancy Food Show does not wear out my internal battery. When I go there, I walk away with more energy than I came with, and that’s because there are so many great things to see, and good people to meet. I love all the really differentiated products, and the crafted products. It’s not only the food, it’s also the packaging, and the ideas that they come up with, and the heritage and the geographies that they bring with food. I am a proud believer in the Fancy Food Show as a ‘can’t miss’ event. I often tell my nonfood clients they should go to this conference. I promise you’ll learn something not only about food, but about culture, and about branding, and about great business practices.