EXPERT: PROPER LIGHTING USE MAKES FRESH PRODUCTS SHINE

ROSEANNE HARPER

ROCHESTER, N.Y. -- Putting the spotlight, literally, on fresh food products increases sales, said a store design expert who helped create the lighting effects at Wegmans Food Markets here.

Additionally, supermarkets ought to tone down the bright flat lighting provided by fluorescent tubes in their stores' ceilings, said the expert, Terry Roberts, president of Merchandising by Design Inc., also here.

Roberts talked about the latest trends using lights to merchandise fresh food during a seminar at the annual convention of the Retail Bakers of America, held recently in San Francisco.

The old approach of fluorescent illumination set at the same level makes everything look flat and "painted on," Roberts said.

Supermarkets are finding out that contrasts in lighting levels and accent lights that are angled properly can do a lot, she said.

The most obvious impact is to draw customers' attention to a product or display, but the overall mix of lighting effects can also define the traffic pattern, pull people into a department, and can give products that don't have much color-rendering by themselves more texture and dimension to make them stand out, Roberts said.

"For example, cheeses and platters of grilled chicken breasts can particularly benefit from well-placed lighting because of their own lack of color," she said.

In addition, the trend toward using natural colors in fixtures, such as wood risers and wicker baskets, makes lighting more important for the same reason, she said.

Roberts said the major types of store lighting are named for their functions and include ambient, accent, appraisal and task lighting. Ambient is the overall light, that creates the general image of the store. A discount store, for example, designed for getting large volumes of people in and out quickly, may have bright ambient lighting.

By comparison, a medium-activity supermarket -- designed to bring customers to different departments and displays with the idea of having them linger there -- would ideally have darker ambient lighting and brighter accent lights, which would draw the focused to displays and individual products, Roberts said.

Appraisal lighting's job is to make the product look its best. "It's designed to model the product, to bring out the texture and shape of it," she said.

The function of task lighting is to make it easy for employees to see their own work as they process and merchandise products. "You want to ask yourself if the employee can see what he's doing. You don't want him to mix up the potato salad and macaroni salad," Roberts said.

Particularly in open production areas, lighting should be used to make the product look appealing, she stressed.

"If a pizza doesn't look good as it's being taken out of the oven, the customer isn't going to wait around to see how it looks on the counter or in the display case."

In an interview with SN after the convention, Roberts said the lighting systems in some units operated by Wegmans offer good case studies of how to integrate the various functions of lighting well.

"The Market Cafes were designed to bring customers' attention quickly to the freshly prepared food, and lighting plays a major role. The ambient lighting is low, and bright accent lighting makes the individual food stations stand out," she said.

Other light sources in the cafes provide adequate appraisal and task lighting, too. Most are on tracks, so their angle can be easily adjusted.

The desired result is that when customers walk into a Market Cafe, they're immediately looking at food, not at the walls or the floor or a sign or a piece of equipment.

"If you know what color the walls are, then the lighting isn't doing what it should be doing. You should be looking at the products," Roberts explained.

Both she and her business partner, Mark Leenhouts, are veteran employees of Wegmans. They left the company last year to start Merchandising by Design, which Roberts describes as a full-service interior and store designing firm.

Roberts, with Wegmans for 12 years, was most recently responsible for Market Cafe operations. Leenhouts, a Wegmans employee for 10 years, was most recently the chain's senior interior designer, and was responsible for the design of the Market Cafes.

Lighting is being increasingly regarded as an integral part of merchandising in the supermarket industry, Roberts said.

"It used to be that a company would build a store, install lighting, and then they'd decide what they were going to sell and how. Now, successful operators figure out first what they're going to be selling and then build everything, including lighting, around that," she said. "Department stores have been building lighting around what they're merchandising for years."

Consumers' evolving buying habits are driving the most recent change in lighting design at supermarkets. Busy consumers are buying food they're going to eat right away or as soon as they get home, so it better look appetizing, she said.

"As recently as 10 years ago, most sales in a supermarket were ingredients for something to be made at home, but that's no longer the case. Consumers are buying prepared foods and they want excitement, stimulation," Roberts said.

"Supermarket customers also are shopping more frequently. And the more prepared foods that are offered, the more frequently they'll be in the store. You don't want them to get bored," she said.

In order to maintain a level of excitement in the store, supermarket delis are re-merchandising more often and they're doing more cross-merchandising as well. That makes flexibility such as that provided by portable track lighting an important ingredient, Roberts pointed out.

"You want employees to be able change the angle of lights easily to highlight a different product or to take away glare. It should be as simple as changing a product card or replacing a sign," she said.

"The biggest enemy of display cases is glare and it can be taken care of usually by switching the angle of a light source. You want the customer to see the product, not be blinded by reflected light."