First, on the road, round a bend and suddenly, there’s a corner… massive trees and towering forests—all more than 40 meters high. At first, not very pleasant. In this, the newest hotspot on the client service circuit, all systems are go for getting you where you need to go as quickly and efficiently as possible, according to Marianne Thybjer, super-market director at Oslo’s Linden Village Supermarket. The rollout is such a speedy and ambitious process that the supermarket runs six months’ worth of trash every three weeks.
Get to Linden Village via Lindev, the de facto “Giant” supermarket of Norway, which is particularly adept at keeping up with the latest special food orders.
These examples offer a range of services, from full-service to the pick-up-only mode taken by the upstart Myq in Oslo. In either scenario, the list of phone numbers to call comes from the store, which on Thursday offers a free 15-minute food delivery service by Dunkin’ Donuts.
Clearly, these supermarkets are also hotbeds of activity; post-order, offerings include fresh coffee, pizza, sandwiches, breakfast sandwiches, smoothies, Greek yogurt, sushi, ice cream, etc. I tried out a range of ancillary options from fresh fruit to handcrafted ice cream. From a purely virtual perspective, Myq’s service was the most impressive because it allowed me to grab items from the shelf; Linden and Myq also have classes for children that I could sign up for via the grocery’s app.
In all four stores, workers take the time to help you and make your order: two hours at Linden Village, to check your order, and 10 minutes at this outpost for my delivery. Two hours later, I took a cab home with my sundries collected from Whole Foods.
Great incentives—or some low-cost indicators of your ability to behave like an adult—will give you a start in order to at least try to understand all the terms and conditions of “skip the checkout line.”
At the same time, even if you’re a careful shopper, a line-free environment is still hard to find in this early internet age. Retailers now try to position themselves as their customers’ best friends: compare prices, talk product, walk around and see all the area’s options.
I don’t have enough time and data to conclude if online grocery shopping is a viable strategy; for now, I continue to work my way through the carts of physically packaged items and frantically consider whether I should put more of my brain into grocery choice or collecting my fancy items so that when I do head out into the world, I don’t feel a Pavlovian groundswell of “EAT” in my stomach.
More Market Hall: Also visit Market Hall for exclusive deals and products found in outlets and chains, while staying abreast of the latest chain and independent stores at newsstand www.metrosavvy.no.