Fresh The Good Food Market has anchor status in Dublin’s Silicon Docks

Fresh The Good Food Market, winner of the NACS International Convenience Retailer of the Year in 2018, is on a roll.

In October 2019 it opened its latest flagship store in Capital Dock, a dynamic new urban quarter in Dublin. The anchor tenant in a residential tower block comprising 196 new apartments, Fresh is rubbing shoulders with top financial organisations, State Street and JP Morgan, the online recruiter, Indeed and the European HQ for Airbnb.

“We were given the opportunity to open in a very prestigious location in Capital Dock,” says Noel Smith, founder and MD of Fresh The Good Food Market. “It’s a very premium development and we’ve matched that with the store.”

Capital Dock is Fresh’s seventh in Dublin but work is already underway on the eighth in Dublin Landings, another new urban development in the City centre’s business district. Fit out is due to commence mid-February with a scheduled opening in the second quarter, reports Austin McGinley, Brand and Development consultant with Fresh The Good Food Market.

“Stores normally take 16-20 weeks to fit out, depending on the challenges, but it will be a mirror image of the concept in Capital Dock, adapted to suit its location,” he says.

Both stores introduce new ideas to the Fresh format, which will be embedded for 12-months before review, in order to ensure the business has the conviction in the new concepts, McGinley adds.

“We’ve looked at our current fit out and thought about how we can enhance that,” says Smith. “We’ve looked at the different departments and designs and rolled out new concepts.”

These include an extended Fresh Cafe, a new juice bar, plus an ice cream concept offering both soft whipped ice cream and Gelateria.

Combined with Fresh’s upscale urban grocery store model with an emphasis on food-to-go, food for later and in-store casual dining, Capital Dock is set to appeal to the growing number of workers and residents moving into the area. Smith reports the developer’s expectation is that by the end of 2020, there will be in excess of 4,500 people in Capital Dock. Jobs brand Indeed, for example, is currently transferring 800 employees into new offices. That’s all in addition to the footfall in nearby Grand Canal Square, home to another Fresh store.

“The whole area including Grand Canal Square is called Silicon Docks due to the high number of tech firms in that area,” says McGinley. “The Capital Dock store has given us the opportunity to launch new services such as breakfast, which is a table service offer, served from 7am-11am each day.”

The expanded Fresh Cafe, with seating for 48 people and a further 50 outside, has a very premium look and feel, says Smith. The served breakfast offer – a whole new market entry for the Fresh brand – is a great way to promote it, he says.

It’s a winning move, since customer feedback has already prompted an extension to a brunch service until 2pm at the weekends.

An all day breakfast won’t be ruled out either, given the early indications. “We’ve created the right atmosphere and surroundings,” says Smith. “After 10 or 15 minutes you’d think you were sitting in a cafe and don’t realise that you are in a convenience store.”
At 11am Fresh begins to gear up for the busy lunchtime trade from 12-2pm with its iconic all-day salad bar, sandwich bar and hot food offer. Now the retailer switches to self-service mode although seating is always available for all customers.
Lunchtime is extremely busy, reports Smith. Evenings are a little slow but not all the apartments in the tower block are let as yet. “We’re probably 12 months early but the developer asked us to commit and go in early because they wanted the faculties to get going in the location before it was fully occupied,” he says.

Despite the ample amount of seating, Fresh does not offer free WiFi in any of its stores. “It did not fit in with our strategy,” explains Smith. “There’s a lot of engagement in our stores in terms of people eating and chatting. That creates atmosphere and buzz and, given that we are operating in a very high tech world, it’s nice to have a bit of head space and have somewhere where you can go in and just have a coffee and a chat.”

All customers are welcome at Fresh The Good Food Market but the demographic does differ quite strongly, according to location, reports Smith.
Fresh’s Smithfield store, for example, attracts a lot of legal people since it’s on the doorstep of Dublin’s Commercial and Criminal courts and surrounded by an enclave of solicitors’ offices and barristers’ chambers. There are also two hotels in the vicinity plus the Jameson Distillery, which brings tourists into the area.

Conversely, Grand Canal Square, in the hub of Silicon Docks, is host to the likes of Facebook and Google, other company offices and local residents. Here, the shopper profile is largely mid 20s to mid 40s with a high percentage of male customers. The Fresh store enjoys strong traffic across the key day parts – morning, lunchtime and evenings – and appeals to convenience shoppers making purchases for that night or for the following day.

Gyms are also located close to all of the Fresh stores, generating an uptick in healthy eating sales and snacks. In stores with a greater residential demographic, butchers counters feature.“The demographics of the area drive how we lay the store out,” McGinley says.

Customers are also drawn to the Fresh promise, he adds. “Fresh has a strong reputation for offering a really interesting product range that strives to be unique – be that the latest vegan and organic produce, functional drinks or boutique wine. The brand is known for being first to market with ‘food-to-go’ and ‘food for later’ products – that’s what keeps it very interesting for customers of all types,” he says.

Fresh is participating in the current trend for all-things vegan – it makes its own vegan sausage rolls – but is not trying to target vegans per se and by the same token will promote a good steak or a nice burger. “It’s about appealing to people’s senses and to nurture people’s desire to try different things,” McGinley opines.

So can the Fresh The Good Food Market brand travel and dip its toe outside of Dublin and Ireland as well?

“Absolutely,” says Smith. “Since winning the NACS Award in 2018 we’ve had quite a lot of interest in organisations taking the Fresh brand into different countries. We are in that process as we speak. Our focus will be on Dublin but, if we do find the right partner, we will do that from a licence agreement and give them full support from Dublin to roll out in different countries. Hopefully we will be making an announcement on a partnership in the near future.”

Developments are also afoot in terms of new technologies. Fresh has recently introduced self scan into stores with 12 self scan units deployed across the group. “We set our IT company an objective a number of years ago that, if we offered self scan, it would be an additional service rather than replacing exiting customer service units. We wanted self scan that ticked all the boxes – no cash, scales and all the security features. People like it, so we have rolled it out across four stores,” says Smith,

Fresh is also aiming to digitise its loyalty card with a mobile phone app, which Smith describes as “work in progress”.

According to McGinley, the Fresh loyalty card is a great tool for engaging with customers and notifying holders of promotions and special offers in-store or alerting to them in-store events in advance.

One recent example was at Christmas 2019 when Fresh teamed up with the Dublin Gospel Choir and hired a George Michael impersonator plus Flash-mob dancers to put on a performance in its Grand Canal store. “We gave our loyalty members the heads up that something exciting was planned but still kept the surprise. We use the card for little events like that, which was not something a typical ‘convenience store’ would normally kick off in the week before Christmas!,” McGinley smiles.

So what’s next for Fresh The Good Food Market, aside of a new store on the horizon and possible entry into the wider European market?

“We tend not to look too far into the future,” says Smith. “We focus on innovation and that keeps us going as an organisation – looking at the brand and market and trying to understand what’s happening in the marketplace.

“Fresh is starting to really build itself as a strong brand and tenant,” he continues. “We are being contacted by developers wanting Fresh to be the anchor tenant. To be awarded the Capital Dock was site fantastic.”

Similarly with Dublin Landings, where Fresh will sit alongside the Central Bank of Ireland, WeWork, the National Treasury Management Agency plus 700 new apartments in the massive new development.
“To be invited as an anchor tenant gives us huge confidence in our brand. On the back of winning the NACS award, we’ve expanded and moved at quite a pace over the last two years and hopefully we can continue,” says Smith.