Article

· Mar 3, 2020

Shanghai’s city’super at HKRI Taikoo Hui

City’super became the world’s first supermarket to achieve WELL Certification at the Gold level as a Retail pilot project.

The spectrum of sectors adopting WELL^TM is continually broadening, and shopping spaces are at the forefront of this expansion. In December 2018, city’super, a premium gourmet food and lifestyle specialty store at Shanghai’s HKRI Taikoo Hui, reached a milestone that garnered attention and celebration from the global sustainability field. City’super became the world’s first supermarket to achieve WELL Certification at the Gold level as a Retail pilot project.

"City'super placed its customers' health and well-being at the center of decision-making when the store sought to improve its shopping environment, demonstrating a pioneering leadership in promoting the global WELL movement." - Rick Fedrizzi, IWBI Chairman and CEO

This WELL Certified specialty store exemplifies city’super’s commitment to providing an extraordinary “super-living” experience to customers who enjoy food and an enriched lifestyle. President of City Super Group, Jiahua Wu, said, “The WELL journey of this project has been full of challenges, yet is very meaningful; we strive to promote healthy living and the concept of thoughtful service.” Driven by its values of sustainability, human health and well-being, city’super decided to pursue WELL Certification for this store inside Shanghai’s International Financial Center, a space that sees millions of people every day.

To promote innovations in creating a WELL Certified space and to share experiences with unique projects, IWBI conducted an interview with city’super’s project team and stakeholders.

At a glance:

Background

Why did you decide to pursue WELL Certification for city’super? What were your goals?

The brand position of the store encourages new ways of creating an excellent shopping experience. We were able to benefit from applying some innovative technologies. Our vision was not only to differentiate the store from the marketplace, but also to promote health and sustainability in the retail industry. Our focus was not just on the customer-facing retail space. We paid an equal amount of attention to employee working spaces such as the food prep area, shipping and handling space, and other employee offices.

How did you approach the WELL Certification process?

A core strategy was to focus on integrated design that’s aligned with WELL. We made WELL Certification a cross-department effort, collaborating across our design team, human resources team, procurement team, quality control team and facility management team.

We explored many different perspectives on how to incorporate health concepts into this supermarket project. For example, the procurement team conducted in-depth analyses on the nourishment requirements in WELL Certified spaces, and they mapped out strategies to fulfill these requirements. As a WELL Certified supermarket, we need to be selling only healthy foods. On top of that, we need to ensure the ingredients within the goods are tracked by suppliers and disclosed to consumers.

To fully understand WELL’s intricate feature requirements, our WELL consultants ran multiple workshops in great detail with our design and construction teams. The WELL consultants worked hand-in-hand with us throughout the process until we passed the onsite performance verification.

What are some of the challenges that arose when incorporating the WELL features? And how did you overcome these challenges?

The main challenges came from the nature of our business and being the very first supermarket to apply for WELL Certification. Apart from the shopping space, there are also office spaces and kitchens. Unlike a typical office project, there were really unique challenges that arose as soon as the certification process started. The main entrance of the supermarket directly faces the entrance of an adjacent subway station, so it was impossible to use a revolving door or a foyer to isolate the outdoor pollution, and the cooking in kitchens would typically drive PM2.5 levels to exceed limits.

We hired air management professionals to provide a comprehensive remediation plan that included isolating sources of air pollution, using low VOC cleaning products, deploying enhanced ventilation and purification systems, and implementing follow-up protective measures such as purification. The comprehensive approach worked, so that in the end, we successfully contained PM2.5 levels below the designated threshold. Apart from air quality management, we also wanted to bring some tangible healthy shopping experiences to our customers. Therefore, we set up healthy food aisles and incorporated a lot of biophilia and aesthetic design elements, enabling customers to enjoy a comfortable and healthy shopping environment.

Another unique challenge came from the food supply chain. As a supermarket, we have long term strategic cooperations with suppliers, and certain foods we carry — like chocolate and candy — contain over 30 grams of sugar per serving, thus posing a challenge to fulfill Feature 39: Processed Foods. The project team proposed an alternative adherence path (AAP) using choice architecture, education and advertising to meet the intent of the feature. We also launched our city’super Healthy Food Promotion Pilot Program to promote healthier foods and push them to highly visible and accessible spots. We made sure to prioritize healthier foods in our in-store advertisements, display and educational materials.

Highlights

AIR
Feature 01: Air Quality Standards
WELL v2 equivalent - Feature A01: Fundamental Air Quality

Intent: To promote clean air through reducing or minimizing the sources of indoor air pollution, requiring optimal indoor air quality to support the health and well-being of building occupants.

Air quality was a special challenge to the city’super project for the following reasons:

The project is not an entirely enclosed area. It’s located inside a major shopping mall.
During shopping hours, the main entrance doors are constantly open, thus it is very difficult to completely keep the polluted air from entering the store where air is purified.
An underground subway entrance sits right outside the store’s main gate, so polluted air from the subway is essentially funneled into the mall and can easily make its way into city’super.
There are various open areas within the mall, drawing in crowds at any given time.
The overall air quality in Shanghai during winter is quite bad.

City’super has adopted a series of measures to control and prevent pollution at its source to achieve good scores for air quality:

Material selection: We chose construction materials with ultra low off-gassing, which successfully mitigated high VOC levels.
Control at source: We increased ventilation in kitchens and maintenance/cleaning rooms so that poor-quality air does not flow into the rest of the store.
Air filtration: We used HEPA filters for our air purification system and stationed point-of-use air purification units in various at-risk areas of the store.
Air quality monitoring: We installed real time air quality monitors in different areas of the store, which display and report the real-time air quality and call for remediation action whenever necessary.
Routine maintenance: We adopted protocol requiring that toxic levels for cleaning products must be low or even zero, which goes beyond the feature requirements. Additionally, periodic maintenance is required for our air purification systems.

LIGHT
Feature 58: Color Quality
WELL v2 equivalent - Feature L07: Electric Light Quality

Intent: To enhance spatial aesthetics and color differentiation through the use of lamps with quality color rendering abilities.

The lighting quality within a shopping mall can directly affect the desire of customers to purchase goods. Most people prefer to partake in activities and shop under brighter conditions, which is reflected by WELL’s lighting requirements for retail spaces. Our project invested heavily in lighting quality for improved color rendering, illumination and glare control. We made sure all lighting fixtures of this project will have an R9 value of at least 50 for a better shopping experience resulting from high quality color rendering.

MIND
Feature 88: Biophilia I - Qualitative
WELL v2 equivalent - Feature M02: Access to Nature

Intent: To nurture the innate human-nature connection within the project.

In combination with different scenery within the shopping center, the entire interior is decorated with biophilic elements:

Main entrance: The main entrance area is decorated with eye-catching artificial trees to give shoppers a sense of nature.
Functional layout: A flower shop is located right by the entrance. The shop’s display provides shoppers with a welcoming entryway with its daily floral display and aroma.
Furniture style: Our Superlife Culture Club is located right beside the seafood area and the main area is ocean/beach-themed with chairs covered in seashells. The main colors are olive green and wheat yellow.
Color pallet: The colors of the walls are different depending on the type of food sold. The texture consists of honeycomb-shaped wall tiles.
Material selection: Designers used large amounts of wood materials for the interior, and metal was ingeniously embedded into the wood to represent the fibers running through leaves.

MIND
Feature 87: Beauty and Design I
WELL v2 equivalent - Feature M07: Restorative Spaces

Intent: To thoughtfully create unique and culturally-rich spaces.

We deployed many smart designs to meet WELL’s mind requirements, with considerations made regarding both aesthetics and creativity. The result is a unique and artistic supermarket. The store’s operation team also incorporates ongoing lifestyle and cultural activities into the setting. For example, around the annual Chinese Lantern Festival, the supermarket is decorated with lanterns inside. When Halloween approaches, the store features festive pumpkin lanterns, and during the season of the Dragon Boat Festival, you may notice fragrances of lotus leaves and sticky rice cake.

NOURISHMENT
Feature 38: Fruits and Vegetables
WELL v2 equivalent - Feature N01: Fruits and Vegetables

Intent: Ensure that occupants have easy access to fruits and vegetables, increasing their intake of fruits and vegetables.

It goes without saying that nutrition is an important concept for the city’super project. City’super strives to provide a large variety of healthy food choices to customers using the following strategies:

Providing a large selection of fruits and vegetables.
Long-term promotion of healthy food items meeting the requirements for whole gains, low sugar and other nutrition guidelines.
Including comprehensive lists of raw materials and ingredients in foods cooked onsite.
Displaying of various healthy food and diet information on advertising posters.
Strict monitoring of the quality and types of ingredients used in foods to ensure quality and hygiene.

COMFORT Feature 73: Ergonomics: Visual and Physical
WELL v2 equivalent - Feature V02: Visual and Physical Ergonomics

Intent: To reduce strains to the body, and maximize ergonomic comfort and safety.

Many workers on site are cashiers and shop assistants; this means that their jobs require them to stand for long periods of time. City’super has provided impact-absorbing foot pads for each standing worker at their workstation. Stretching areas are also provided for workers to stretch their legs if they so desire.

Scorecard

Looking to the future

The city’super project provided a pathway to success in pursuing WELL Certification for other stores, including Shanghai Lujiazui Guojin Center Store. The goal is to maintain a legacy of high standards for a healthy shopping experience.

“While creating a healthy and comfortable shopping environment, WELL has expanded city’super’s intention for customers to eat, drink and have fun,” said Zhang Qiang, Managing Director of Shanghai KKECO.