Before you drop, don't miss the Red Shed deal on spuds

One item The Warehouse Extra does not stock is Navman. This is a shame. Looking out over the 12,500sq m super-store some global positioning technology would come in handy, if only to get out.

The Warehouse Extra store opens in Sylvia Park today, giving shoppers a chance to check "a new way of shopping for New Zealand".

Same Red Shed, same jingle, but this particular one is "an integrated food and non-food proposition".

And that means customers will be able to buy groceries and woolly slippers, hair straighteners and artificial grass. They can get their pills. They can get their beer.

The aim, says general manager of marketing Stuart Yorston, is to make shopping easier. The areas are colour-coded, so food is in the yellow, homeware in the green, clothing in the blue and so on.

"People want to save money and time," Yorston says.

Even people who don't want to save time are kept happy. They can spend the entire day in The Warehouse Extra, now that they have a cafe which serves breakfast all day.

Whether the food store will offer cheaper food than the Foodtown next door remains to be seen.

Mr Yorston says the aim is to be competitive. The store will check prices against the other supermarkets and have "specials".

"But," says Mr Yorston, " we're not starting a price war."

On a tiki tour about the store, Mike Pook, the format development manager, reveals customers don't like it when staff are re-stocking the shelves a customer wants to pillage.

They don't like trolley dodgems caused by narrow aisles. They like to browse in the health and beauty section. They like to escape quickly if they only want one thing.

So the aisles are wide and there are 28 checkouts, spread right across the store. The "line of sight" has been lowered, so it's easy to see signs and shelves aren't out of reach. And to save time the rotisserie chickens are between the salad and the bread.

"The simplest meal solution known to man.

"Bread, chicken, salad. You're away."

He has another line: "As customers come in they see fresh food on the right and fresh fashion on the left."

The fashion is the same as that in the other Red Sheds, but stacked on flasher shelves.

If shopper's fatigue sets in along the 16 freezers dedicated to icecream the writing on the wall will cheer them on: "Savings on wine and beer are just around the corner ... "

In the meantime, buy 10kg of spuds for $2.99.