Susie O’Brien: Nice try, Coles, but the new store is not that inspiring

The new Coles Local stores look great and aim to inspire us but, really, it’s just a shop and there’s nothing local about it, writes Susie O’Brien.

VICTORIA’S newest supermarket doesn’t just want to sell you loo paper, margarine and lunch meat. It wants to inspire you. This is the message from Wesfarmers, which has just opened the first Coles Local store in sleepy, leafy Surrey Hills.

In case you don’t know it, Surrey Hills is a wealthy eastern Melbourne suburb. It’s a rich man’s Blackburn and a poor man’s Balwyn and has one of the deadliest rail crossings in the state. A new sew-your-own-pyjamas class at the Neighbourhood Centre is about as exciting as it gets.

So I was interested to see how inspiring the new supermarket — billed as the future of food retailing — really is. Should I be inspired by the chance to spend $60 on an orchid in a pretty pot that I can buy for $35 up the street? Inspired by having to squeeze my Ford Territory into the tiny space between a Range Rover Discovery and an Audi 4WD Quattro? Inspired by all the private-school mums in activewear picking up $70-a-kilo imported cheese for a girls’ night in?

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Maybe not …

Step inside the store and it’s all very wholesome and lush. There are no Disney footprints on the floor leading toddlers to the squeeze yoghurt aisle. No lolly-injected check-outs packed with parents and their pestering kids. No red “Down, Down” hands and Casey Donovan cut-outs. It’s extremely pretty — even the Christmas decorations are tasteful wooden trees that

Coles boss Steven Cain in a new Coles Local store. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Rebecca Judd would snap up in a flash.

There’s a beautifully arranged fruit and veg section, an in-house barista and a Foodie Hub selling items such as grass-fed free-range bone broth, truffle mayo and wagyu pastrami. The hub is staffed by Michael from MasterChef, whose signature recipe is smoked trout cucumber rolls with homemade chilli jam, baby beetroots and trendy hipster apple cider. (That’s $50 worth of ingredients for something that bleeds on the plate.)

Even the take-home bags — one dollar a pop — look like something from a New York Borough Farmers’ Market. And the trolleys are black. Povvo metal trolleys with a trail of dried toddler snot are clearly not good enough for Surrey Hills shoppers. If you want your trolley to match your outfit, then this is the place for you.

They tell us Coles Local is all about catering for the community.

The word local is used about 430 times in the brochure.

Local history.

Local produce.

Local community.

And, unfortunately, local prices, which seem to be about three
times what you’d normally pay anywhere else.

While they’ve got the vibe right, some of the offerings are weird and very, very expensive. Why buy a blueberry probiotic kefir yoghurt drink for $7.95 when you can have plain milk for $2? Why buy Gelista non-dairy ice cream for $14.52 when you can buy Peter’s two-litre ice cream for $4? And why buy Ooh Yum desserts for $11.95 when Nana’s rhubarb crumble is just $4?

With more than 100,000 employees, 800 stores around the country and one billion dollars in profit a year, there’s nothing local about Coles.

What the Coles Local crew might be forgetting is that rich people don’t like paying too much for things.

That’s why they’re rich and the rest of us are sweating on the arrival of the water bill.

But let’s not kid ourselves. Food shopping is, and always will be, a chore. There’s nothing inspiring about it.

Even the chance to pick your own loose leaf tea doesn’t change that.

Supermarket shopping for most of us is a bloody battle with screaming kids, long queues and a choice between 17 types of near-identical peanut butter.

You remember what you forgot to buy the minute you get home and you always spend twice as much as you planned.

And the bulk-buys suck you in: no, you don’t need five tubs of stain remover for the price of three when one will do.

In any case, for all of Coles’ patter about serving the local community, there’s no escaping the fact that this is about a dominant business seeking a lucrative new growth area, not a public service.

Coles has more than 100,000 employees, 800 stores around the country and makes a billion dollars in profit a year.

There’s nothing local about it.

In the end, it depends on what you want.

If you want to pay $11 for half a litre of organic, gluten-free, dairy-free, fructose-friendly, coconut ice cream, this is the place for you. If you want to feel good because your supermarket has energy-efficient fridges and wooden Christmas decorations, then this is the place for you.

If you want the widest range of goods at the lowest prices, then go find your inspiration somewhere else.

Susie O’Brien is a Herald Sun columnist

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