Caroline Maddenreports on the Fresh supermarket chain, which caters for cash-rich time-poor professionals with sophisticated tastes.
Around mid-morning every day, an incongruous scene unfolds at the Fresh supermarket in Dublin's south docks.
The trendy outdoor café area fills with site workers wearing high-visibility jackets taking a break from nearby construction sites to delicately sip lattés and gaze contemplatively across the pleasant vista of Grand Canal Basin.
Come lunchtime, the builders are back for more sustenance, but this time are outnumbered by hordes of office workers jostling in the queue for gourmet sandwiches and salads, to be washed down by a smoothie from the juice bar.
As evening sets in, cash-rich, time-poor docklands residents drop in en route to their apartments to grab gourmet salmon quiches and chicken pies, and a bottle of vino from the in-store wine shop, the Wine Barrel.
Occupying the ground floor of the arresting glass building, 1 Grand Canal Square, the Fresh store taps into the constant stream of workers and residents passing through the burgeoning docklands area from dawn to dusk. And by integrating elements of a café, a convenience store, a delicatessen and a fresh food market into one location, Fresh maximises its appeal while setting itself apart from the competition.
The masterminds behind the Fresh supermarket chain - which also has stores in Smithfield and Northern Cross on the Malahide Road - have a unique understanding of the market. Simon Kelly, son of well-known property developer Paddy Kelly, David Kelly and retailer Noel Smith originally joined forces to open a Mace store in the Irish Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in 2003, followed by a Spar supermarket on Camden Street. Despite the success of these stores, the trio decided to strike out on their own.
"Simon always had this fascination with wanting to create our own brand," Smith recalls. "He felt that the convenience market was saturated and it was time to do something different. So when we got the opportunity to put a store in Smithfield, Simon said, 'now it's time to do something different'."
And so 'Fresh - the Good Food Market' was born. The concept was inspired by farmers' markets, upmarket delicatessens and US organic and natural food purveyors like the popular Whole Food Market - which opened a store in London in June to huge fanfare. The emergence of an affluent, well-travelled, discerning Irish consumer with international tastes also served as an inspiration.
As with other upmarket food stores in the capital, such as Donnybrook Fair and Exchequer Street's food emporium Fallon & Byrne, the epitome of the Fresh concept was to allow shoppers to indulge their gourmet tastes.
As well as engaging Douglas Wallace Architects to design the stores, Smith brought The Design Factory on board to develop the brand's identity and to create that je ne sais quoi needed to set Fresh apart from its generic competitors - and to transform grocery shopping from a chore into an enjoyable experience.
The designers succeeded in creating a look that is at once modern and relaxing. Arty, black and white shots of pumpkins and corn on the cobs adorn the walls, alongside food-themed quotes such as the Irish proverb "is maith an t-anlann an t-ocras".
Ceilings have been left exposed rather than installing claustrophobic suspended ceilings typically used in supermarkets. The airy feeling this creates is enhanced by low shelving and short aisles. The store layout allows the customer to choose their own route, rather than being forced along a set path.
Regular grocery brands such as Kelloggs and Dolmio are stocked, but the curved ends of each aisle are used to prominently display organic and speciality food, much of which is supplied by artisan producers found at farmers' markets.
But the pièce de résistance has to be the fresh produce, which takes up one-third of each store's floor space. In the vegetable section for example, baskets of glossy aubergines, bunches of carrots with bushy green fronds intact and huge artichoke hearts are displayed under white canopies that create a distinctive market ambience, and draw in health-conscious shoppers.
"This isn't a store that's going to be successful on selling the standard grocery item," says Conor Whelan, the chain's recently-appointed chief executive, who previously held the position of managing director at BWG Foods, operators of the Spar and Mace brands. "The business case is based on generating higher margins because of our higher participation on the fresh foods . . . Our objective is to get participation in our fresh departments as high as possible. That will allow us to sell the rest of the groceries at competitive prices."
It seems that the Fresh brand has already gained the cachet its founders were aiming for. The flagship store in Smithfield created such a buzz that property developers were soon knocking on their door inviting the chain into new developments.
Smith recalls that the developer of 1 Grand Canal Square, for example, felt that the Fresh image would set the right tone for the landmark building, which is since reported to have attracted Europe's largest bank, HSBC, as a tenant. "You can imagine that a corporate company describing where their new offices are don't want to say it's over your traditional supermarket," Smith explains.
So where to from here? The founders of the chain are so confident in their business model that the IFSC Mace store, and and a recently acquired adjoining building, are soon being converted into a Fresh store, which will be trading by the end of the year. Plans are afoot to do the same with the Camden Street Spar, and in the longer term, to grow the chain to 20 stores by 2010.
As the Spar generation begins to mature, could Fresh be the future of urban food shopping?
