Grocery stores adapt to urban trends

North America’s grocers are discovering that if they build a better food store, customers will beat a path to their door — or, in some instances, to their basement parking garage. Across the US and Canada, a growing number of supermarket companies no longer automatically insist on constructing a 55,000- to 65,000-square-foot box sitting behind a big expanse of asphalt. Instead, they’ll agree to operate stores that come up to the sidewalk, that have small shops along their perimeter, or that — in dense urban settings — have parking underneath. A new age in grocery store design appears to be dawning. “Almost all the supermarket chains are willing to be flexible,” says Robert Gibbs, a retail consultant based in Birmingham, Michigan. Here are conclusions that emerge from a New Urban News look at food store innovations: • In high-density city neighborhoods, supermarket operators are learning they can attract plenty of customers despite placing much of the parking in a below-ground garage or on the roof. To make underground or rooftop parking relatively convenient, one escalator carries the shopping carts full of groceries to the parking level while an adjoining escalator carries the customers. • In the upscale and natural-foods niches of

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