Today's store tour is a very newly renovated store in the Pelham Bay neighborhood of the Bronx. At just under 24,000 square feet, it actually becomes one of the larger supermarkets in this part of the borough. Pelham Bay, by the way, is in the far eastern part of the Bronx, just to the north of
Throggs Neck. Pelham Bay is a notably higher income neighborhood of the Bronx, with a large Italian population. And that brings us to Bonavita Market (now Key Food, formerly Pioneer), owned by Salvatore Bonavita. Clearly Bonavita is the family name, but it's also an excellent name for a supermarket as it translates to "good life."
The parking lot, by the way, is covered with solar panels, as is the store's roof. Heading to the storefront, we find an enclosed bulk and sale section which runs along the store's front wall (which faces the parking lot). We enter to produce in the first aisle running along Westchester Avenue, or the left side of the store, with deli and bakery in the back corner, meats on the back wall, dairy in the second-to-last aisle, and frozen foods on the right-side wall.
The new renovation at this store looks amazing. New floor, light, ceiling, and decor, though as we see some of the fixtures are older.
Looking towards the front wall/parking lot. Notice that some of the ceiling, which is on different levels, looks more even when it's all painted black.
A beautiful Italian-style deli in the back corner, with bakery on the back wall. This Bonavita does bake in-store, but the bakery is not set up as a service department.
Stacks of grated parmesan make up a lot of the cheese department, with lots of cheese and fresh pasta in this area. Notice that these fixtures are newer than the produce department.
Heading into the grocery aisles, we find slightly cramped but fully stocked grocery selections. Because the store is so deep, the aisles are split in half.
There are a few of these backlit Bonavita logo signs around the store, and they're awesome. Meats line the back wall...
Really cool modern decor on the back wall here.
Dairy, slightly oddly, lines the inside of the second-to-last grocery aisle. There are a few freezer cases facing, with the rest lining the last aisle.
Meats continue about halfway along the last aisle, with frozen foods in the front part and lining the facing aisle.
Looking across the very nice front-end. Notice the backlit Bonavita sign on the front wall, the "B" awnings, and the checkout lane markers, which light up red or green for closed and open. Absolutely top-notch decor around the store, but I haven't been able to tell which design firm designed this store (if it wasn't done in-house, hard to tell).
Bonavita Market Key Food
3151 Westchester Ave, Pelham Bay, Bronx, NY
Photographed March 2020
Interesting point you make concerning the black paint on the ceiling. I agree that it looks good in this store. On the other hand, however, Kroger is painting the ceiling black in one of its new décor packages, and I'm not a fan at all. Now I'm wondering why the effect is so different. Is it the height? Drop ceiling vs. open ceiling? Lightning differences?
ReplyDeleteI've got some links showing this; hopefully they work (I'm just copying and pasting them from a flickrmail). I've sourced them from Discord but they were originally posted on Facebook, according to the person who shared them on the former. Curious to hear what you think. (Also, not that you have to give an opinion on the décor package itself, but I'm not a fan of it, either...)
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/486201281942388736/743662268650356816/117651094_10223362359275164_1749549126434413832_n.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/486201281942388736/743662336040108083/117532725_10223362362235238_7389324900096585693_n.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/486201281942388736/743662349000507462/117534520_10223362360675199_3292787932118899113_n.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/486201281942388736/743662379065409632/117595941_10223362363475269_2594778694586225557_n.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/486201281942388736/743662411478728734/117599570_10223362364435293_9067681716354907134_n.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/486201281942388736/743662442986602506/117605240_10223362360955206_5385807972452765006_n.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/486201281942388736/743662475240669364/117637851_10223362359995182_7261324498468883196_n.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/486201281942388736/743662516244316260/117645096_10223362364115285_3775477008382408899_n.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/486201281942388736/743662689011892264/117888592_10223362361995232_1776555731439997870_n.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/486201281942388736/743662723249864715/117906389_10223362363715275_2018764897423626041_n.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/486201281942388736/743662548037009529/117653879_10223362361435218_7720940246174591485_n.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/486201281942388736/743662579238305872/117716986_10223362361155211_530738073611691493_n.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/486201281942388736/743662613724135594/117768004_10223362360355191_4508849775866208219_n.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/486201281942388736/743662658569633843/117774095_10223362361675224_7396702749790823134_n.jpg
There's a lot to take in here. Let me see if I can kind of arrange my thoughts logically, which I am drawing from my own experience as a shopper along with background in architecture, design, and marketing, and from professionals in the food business with whom I work.
DeleteOne of the first things I notice in a supermarket is the sightlines. When I stand in any given location, what can I see? What is the first thing I notice, and where do I tend to settle when I look around? What the Bonavita does well is that the sightlines are all horizontal. You look across the store, down an aisle, at the deli. Your eyes don't wander. An effectively designed ceiling makes the ceiling disappear. This can have two effects:
First, in poorly designed stores, you get an odd roofless feeling. You feel like there is simply space above you with nothing until the moon and stars. This is a bad design because sightlines wander -- people begin to subconsciously ramble around the visual experience instead of focusing on decor and, most importantly, products. A cause of this is a lack of any denotation of where the "store" ends and the "ceiling" begins. You've created a metaphorical black hole of customers' attention -- there are not enough visual cues on where to look.
Second, in well designed stores, the customer's sight is kept at approximately eye-level as sightlines focus on the products close to them and the decor on the wall opposite where they are. So hypothetically if you stand in produce at the front of the store, you're focusing on two things: the produce right in front of you, and the signage for the meat department on the back wall. You do not look up because there is a clear line of where the store ends. I'm not sure if that makes any sense, but here's an example at CitiGrocer in Elizabeth, NJ (one of the best designed supermarkets I've ever stepped foot in). https://www.marketreportblog.com/2019/08/tour-citigrocer-elizabeth-nj.html See how the decor doesn't actually go all the way to the extreme top of the roof/ceiling? But the colorful panels on the walls end at a certain space, meaning customers' eyes stop with them. There's no wandering. This is referred to as "lowering the visual height" of the building. Regardless of how high the ceiling is, it can feel lower and therefore more personal. This keeps customers' eyes looking at the products, not the lights and HVAC ducts. Another stunningly beautiful supermarket, which I have photographed but not yet posted, is the ShopRite of Somerset, NJ. Check out this picture and you can see how the visual height is lowered with hanging panels from the ceiling, lower hanging track lighting, and space between the top of the decor and the ceiling. https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a7a2dd_84a91160c3594e5da9a79601b3fc3609~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_899,h_600,al_c,q_90,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01/a7a2dd_84a91160c3594e5da9a79601b3fc3609~mv2.webp
To be continued...
DeleteNow compare the curved panels in the ShopRite to the slanted wood panels over the service meat and seafood departments in the Kroger. When we look at a sign, we're naturally trained to focus on the text. In the ShopRite, the text is at the bottom of the curve. Who cares? Well, that actually visually moves your eye from the vast expanse that is the produce department to the sign by following the curvature of the sign. Meanwhile, in the Kroger, the sign is at the top of the slanted panel. That structure produces weak visual movement -- our eye doesn't know where to go on the slant. Down, where we find a blank wall and prep space? Or up, where we move into the vast expanse? In giant boxes like supermarkets, you don't want to move the customers' eye INTO the vast expanse, you move their eye OUT OF the vast expanse TO products. That sign just isn't constructed in a way that does that. Does that make any sense at all?
Now look at the bakery department. See how it's so much more pleasing? That's because of two factors:
1) The visual height has been lowered with a partial drop ceiling over the decor. Our eye doesn't wander up.
2) There is no movement in the decor because everything is flat and straight. Instead of the lines drawing your eye up and out from the department, like in meat and seafood, the dominant line is the black trim across the department -- drawing your eye from one side to the other, looking across the department instead of away from it.
So............... what I'm trying to say is the ceiling in two stores might be identical, but the design of what's under the ceiling is 99.9999% of how you understand and experience the space. I hope that addresses what you're talking about!
Wow, thanks so much for taking the time to look at the situation and provide this great analysis! Unfortunately I can't see that ShopRite picture, but regardless, I still think I understand what you're saying. There are many things in your response that I hadn't considered before, and you also explain them in a very professional, expert-like manner. I appreciate that! That really helps to make the argument easy to follow and process.
DeleteOn the point of "lowering the visual height": it's very interesting, because Kroger has employed that concept for many years. All sorts of packages have used that technique, such as the "millennium" decor shown here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/130271900@N03/28291948100/in/album-72157649854319160/ However, more recently, bountiful decor did not use that technique, at least not with the strict upper border; instead, the paint color extended all the way up to the ceiling: https://www.flickr.com/photos/130271900@N03/18801856378/in/album-72157650517564069/ And yet... I never had a problem with my eyes wandering up toward the ceiling in that store. I wonder if the stencils act as the object to "ground" shoppers' eyes, in that scenario.
This new package, at least where the perimeter walls are concerned (I'll get to the service departments later), goes back to the original method of including an upper border line. So then why do my eyes go up to the ceiling in this package, if they never went up there before, even in a package that didn't have that border? That's a major part of the issue I have, and I'm thinking now it has to do with the lighting standing out so much, given the contrast between the white lights and the black ceiling. With so few in the way of visual cues in the store (i.e. sparse decor/white walls, plain gray floor, black ceiling), that contrast is drawing my eyes up there more than I think they would have been had the ceiling been a more typical lighter color to match. As a whole, I feel like all the elements combine to give the store a cavernous, dark, no-frills warehouse feel, which is not what I associate with a supermarket -- but it's not totally the elements' fault, as clearly, good supermarket visuals can be achieved with similar elements, as you have proven.
Onto the service departments -- that's a very good point about how the bakery is a lot more pleasing than the meat and seafood department. I had noticed that, but never would have been able to consciously figure out why. Thank you for the explanation! Now that I see that, I totally agree.
The Kroger in Oxford is currently undergoing a remodel/expansion involving this decor package. At first, I was disappointed that its service departments seem to be getting "watered down" versions of the signage as compared to what can be seen in that Atlanta store; with the rest of the decor already not giving me anything to like about it, I was hoping at least the service departments would add some pizzazz. But, at least in one department, it would seem that in fact this cheaper route might prove better. Take a look at this photo from Google Maps: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/p/AF1QipOdwlVfl8oWB3_umv-p6luVAHd_alOKxrWMIBnT=s0
Looking at it now, having read your analysis, I think the deli department is much better to look at, because it has that upper border above the letters. The bakery, on the other hand, has no such line, and thus it's easier to get lost and look toward the ceiling.
I guess what I'm trying to get across overall is that I feel the black ceiling, for whatever reason, is way more pervasive in this new Kroger decor than it needs to be; it distracts me and pulls my attention away. At first I thought this was due simply to the plain gray floors and plain white walls, but you've added a whole new layer to my interpretation that also helps a lot to explain why I'm reacting the way I am. Thanks again for all your insight here, and hope I didn't take up too much of your time with all this!
Thank you!! Glad I could be of help. Try this to see the ShopRite picture: https://images.app.goo.gl/e23QDJNorGL5nPxJ9
DeleteI agree, the new Kroger has a no-frills feel to it which I am not a fan of at all. Certainly not for a major supermarket chain. I don't know about in your area, but in my area, Albertsons' latest remodels and new stores are so much better, if definitely simpler: https://goo.gl/maps/3N3rBRbvDN783zJd7
Couldn't agree more that the cheaper, simpler remodel version of the decor looks a million times better. I hope that ends up in more stores than the weird giant warehouse feeling one you posted originally!
Visual movement is one of those concepts I learned in my fine arts-based design classes and in the totally theoretical fine arts class context, I just couldn't understand it. But once you see it in practice like this, you really start to see why it's so important. Always happy to add insight where I can, let me know if you have any other questions!
You're welcome! And yes, that ShopRite link works -- wow, stunning store there!
DeleteYes, I've been a fan of that "Quality Built" decor ever since ACME Style showcased its debut years ago. I learned just the other day that that is actually still ACME's current decor package, which surprised me, seeing as it's been around for a bit longer than I think your typical decor package is -- but I guess if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? (Compare to Walmart, which has now released its fourth revision of a decor package that debuted only around 2016 or so. And of course, each version has been successively worse. But I digress...)
I hope so, too; and in fact, since Kroger has about five different decor packages in current use right now (I have zero clue why that is, but hey)... I actually kinda find myself hoping that Artisan -- that is, the package we've been discussing -- doesn't even end up in many more stores at all. Not when they have other, better ones to choose from. :/
Always good to find opportunities to apply things! I doubt I would have had a class like that had I gone this route, but still, I regret not doing Marketing as my minor (I did Finance instead). Oh well.
Quality Built is an awesome decor package. There have been minor modifications, and the best and biggest one is the switch from a dark wood floor to a light wood floor in the remodels. I must say, the Shaw's (Boston) version of Quality Built is way better than ACME's... although both look great. I've been to a few renovated Shaw's but they won't be posted for a very very very long time. So here's a look at what I'm saying... https://goo.gl/maps/m94276h3cAAoEffx7
DeleteOoh, nice! Isn't that very similar to Jewel-Osco, too? (Or am I just imagining/misremembering things?)
DeleteI think so! I've never been to a Jewel-Osco though :)
DeleteYeah, I'm in the same boat on that one :P
DeleteThis was a Grand Union supermarket until the early 1990’s!!!
ReplyDeleteThat would explain dairy being in the second to last aisle.
MN
Oh thanks! I might have read that somewhere but that makes a lot of sense. I've definitely been in former Grand Unions with dairy in the second-to-last aisle.
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