Target Takes Aim at Quick-Trip Convenience
By Greg Lindenberg on Mar. 21, 2017MINNEAPOLIS -- Taking a page from Wal-Mart and Amazon's channel encroaching playbook, Target Corp. on March 20 unveiled design elements for the company’s most comprehensive store redesign to date—one that creates a “store-within-a-store” convenience-like section of the building with its own entrance.
Minneapolis-based Target’s Chairman and CEO Brian Cornell introduced the redesign this week at the retail e-commerce event ShopTalk in Las Vegas. Target plans to open the first fully reimagined store in the Houston suburb of Richmond in October; 40 additional stores will receive elements of Target’s next-generation redesign when they are updated in October.
“With our next generation of store design, we’re investing to take the Target shopping experience to the next level by offering more elevated product presentations and a number of time-saving features,” said Cornell. “The new design for this Houston store will provide the vision for the 500 reimagined stores planned for 2018 and 2019, with the goal of taking a customized approach to creating an enhanced shopping experience.”
Here are details of the store-within-a-store redesign …
The new design offers two entrances, each with a specific customer need in mind. Regular shoppers can enter through a more traditional entrance to find the usual selection of Target merchandise in “elevated, cross-merchandise product presentations.” Shoppers who “need to make this trip quick” can enter through a door that leads to a new area laid out like a c-store.
The “quick trip” entrance features a Starbucks.
It leads to a Wine & Beer Shop.
An enhanced grocery department includes a “robust” assortment of fresh produce, as well as grab-and-go options and meal solutions.
The convenience-like section also features several new services and technology:
- Self-checkout lanes.
- A dedicated Order Pickup counter and dedicated parking spaces outside this entrance where team members will bring out online orders.
- This fall, all team members will be equipped with devices to search inventory, take payment from a mobile point-of-sale (POS) system and arrange delivery from the sales floor of the entire store.
This redesign follows Target’s previously announced plans to open more than 100 small-format stores over the next three years.
“This year, we’ll completely remodel 110 stores, open 30 new small-format stores to expand our footprint into dense urban neighborhoods, like Manhattan’s Herald Square and on college campuses, like the University of Florida, Gainesville,” Cornell said. “In 2018 and 2019, we’ll fully renovate 500 more stores."