The most vibrant retail experience on the planet is, amazingly, a grocery store chain: Eataly, based in Turin, Italy. It has 40 locations, twelve in Italy and the rest in major cities across ten countries around the world, and caters to consumers through its theme, “A Journey through Culinary Italy”. Eataly models its locations after open-air markets of its native Italy but under one roof, with grocery aisles fused with a caffé, multiple restaurants, and sometimes a museum. They are generally filled, day and night, with people shopping, drinking, eating, people-watching, and socializing. (When I first encountered the one in New York’s flatiron district and then the one in Chicago, I thought, given the oh-so-perfect name, it was an American company! But no, it is native to Italy, and the one in Milan, a former theater, is amazing.)
Eataly supplies all five economic offerings
While it’s still at its heart a grocery store, Eataly supplies all five economic offerings. You can purchase the commodities of meats, grains, produce, cheeses, and other Italian foodstuffs. You can shop for packaged goods such as pasta, olive oil, and biscotti, not to mention appliances, cutlery, and utensils to use on all those commodities and goods to make Italian meals. There’s the normal retail service of merchandising everything for sale, as well as quick-service meals. Then you can have experiences through shopping, discovery, socializing, having a coffee in the caffè, and eating a meal with family or friends. Each of these may have such an effect on customers that it yields a lifestyle transformation. Furthermore, each Eataly has a culinary school at which you pay admission to learn how to better cook Italian meals, each class or event moving you along the transformation of becoming an Italian chef – which would cause you to buy even more of the lower-level economic offerings from the company.
While Eataly charges admission for the culinary school (ie, explicitly as an experience), like so many companies it gives away the value of its restaurant & caffe experiences and doesn’t charge for transformations. If it thought more richly about it, the company could do more to enhance its transformations, and create more economic value. Nonetheless, all five economic offerings are there, as here’s a way to think about them in the spirit of the Personal Progression of Economic Value tool:
So if you’ve never been to one, get thee to an Eataly! Take a friend, and be sure to check out at least the first four levels of economic offerings as you shop, drink, and eat. And if you have time, do pay admission to go to a cooking class, particularly if you are an amateur chef, or desire to be. You won’t be disappointed.
Joe Pine
© 2024 B. Joseph Pine II