Cold Storage

Wine presents a particular retail challenge. Some customers arrive knowing exactly what they want and want to find it quickly; others want to browse, discover something new or understand the difference between regions and products before committing to a purchase.

Cold Storage wanted a concept capable of serving both behaviours. The brief called for a fresh, future-facing environment that made the category easier to navigate while introducing food and wine pairing, product education and tasting into the shopping experience.

Greater Group began with market research into Singapore shoppers, identifying distinct customer profiles with different levels of time, knowledge and willingness to explore. Those behaviours became the basis of the customer journey rather than designing the department around product categories alone.

The concept was structured around four stages: Inspire, Curate, Educate and Engage. The entrance uses visual merchandising and promotion to attract attention; the product gallery simplifies discovery and navigation; and the tasting lounge allows customers to sample wines, learn from specialists and explore suggested food pairings. A digital layer extends the experience through product information, reviews, membership and personalisation.

The prototype reframed the wine department from somewhere customers simply select a bottle into somewhere they can discover one. By combining clearer navigation with tasting, education, digital interaction and cross-merchandising with food, the concept gave confident shoppers a faster route to purchase while giving less familiar customers more support to explore.

More importantly, the three prototypes gave Cold Storage a way to test a new retail experience before taking it further across the network, using customer behaviour rather than convention as the starting point for supermarket design.