KEY POINTS:
The first company in a trend to new specialist retail outlets - Nosh in Glen Innes - is looking at expanding into more locations.
But nine months after opening the first store, Nosh co-owner Clinton Beuvink says expansion will be difficult given the dominance of supermarket chains.
Beuvink
still sees prospects using the co-operative-based structure where allied food retailers work together at the same destination sharing checkout and other facilities. But he says they will be hard to establish because of the quality and the number of supermarkets.
"New Zealand has more supermarkets per head of population than virtually other place and the standard is usually very high," Beuvink says.
Producers and suppliers of the specialty food products stocked at the stores such as Nosh in Glen Innes and Farro Fresh in Remuera are providing outlets for craft and manufactured foodstuffs that have limited access to big supermarkets.
However, they say supermarkets are not ignoring such product.
New World and some Foodtown stores are now more ready to stock craft and specialist foods produced in quantities that were too small to consider in the past.
Supermarket chains say they are watching with interest - but not with concern - the trend to stores specialising in fine food.
The Retailers Association says New Zealand is lagging behind other countries with the development but that there is a trend to speciality stores.
Foodtown and Woolworths supermarkets general manager Dave Chapman said that so far only Nosh and Farro Fresh and Moore Wilson in Wellington had adopted a noticeable profile.
The owner of the chains - Progressive Enterprises - is watching developments. "New Zealand does not have the population to support this trend on any big scale and time will tell whether they would continue as a stand-alone basis," Chapman said.
Combined fine-food outlets are common at British retail outlets such as Marks & Spencer.
But Chapman says that the Australian department store David Jones has revealed the limitations in this region for the fine-food market outside supermarkets.
David Jones wrote off tens of millions of dollars from its failed plan to roll out its well-known in-store foodhalls into a chain of stand-alone stores.
It reverted back to their being based inside department stores. Chapman said the logistics were different for supermarkets than for specialist markets. "Supermarkets are aimed at the mass market but we carry virtually all the products," he said.
But it may be may be that they are harder to find.
Retailers Association northern regional manager Russell Sinclair said Nosh and Farro Fresh were part of a global trend to specialty shopping that was primarily - but not exclusively - aimed at consumers with high incomes.
Farro Fresh co-owner James Draper said the store - which has one associated retailer but is not based around the co-operative structure for Nosh - was aimed at premium products.
It was was focused on small New Zealand brands that were not in supermarkets, he said.
"We bring together a number of specialist stores, grocery delicatessen, in a relaxed ambience that includes a chef cooking," Draper said.
"But we do not market or mention the word 'gourmet' because of the connotation we are expensive, which we are not."
Beuvink said he developed the Nosh co-operative structure in part to cater to specialist retailers who were being shut out of suburban strip retail areas because of rising property values and rents.
He agreed there was a limited clientele for specialist markets such as Nosh - possibly 10 to 20 per cent of the population.
"It's the right time in New Zealand because there's more sophistication," he said, but he said it would be difficult in New Zealand because the ratio of supermarkets to the population was so high.
