Increased safety, reduced liability key to post-COVID retail stores
Take a moment to read our recent article on the Winsight Grocery Business website [source]:
Traditional brick-and-mortar retail locations are constantly remodeled and retooled to reflect changes in demographics, as well as consumers’ tastes and standards. Throw in the frequent introduction of new technologies, and whether it’s grocery, apparel, club warehouses, c-store, high-end luxury, casual dining or big-box mass merchandiser, the result is a retail environment that has always been in a continuous state of reinvention.
Even given this state of nearly perpetual change, things have shifted dramatically now. As the COVID-19 restrictions are lifted, the anticipated resumption of in-store physical retailing can be better described as a complete reset, rather than a resumption or restart. A restart implies that the pandemic was a pause and that things will once again return to normal. Survival now rests on reducing liability and increasing safety as much as increasing profitable sales. When it comes to the matter of in-store layout, the “retail reset” entails a huge shift in priorities, away from merchandising and oriented toward safety.