IDIOT-PROOF SUPERMARKETS

I wrote this about six years ago.  With new supermarket food display laws coming in October, I think I was ahead of the game! 

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Food, diet, health all have their actual or well-spun controversies, crises, epidemics, etc.  The obsession with reducing plastic bags (don't get me started on that one) seems to be much more important than actually changing behaviour on what we put into our cakeholes.

Supermarkets need a bloody good overhaul to make things clear to the dumb, dense, witless public (for that is what we are folks in the minds of the behavioural nudgers in politics and business).  So, here it is again.  My revolutionary supermarket layout to satisfy nanny and matron, and to guide us to the promised land of long life and happiness..

All the talk about retail regeneration, clarity for customers and healthy living, got me thinking that all food stores, large, medium and small, should adopt the simplest form of layout.  

Asking customers to read product labels is a non-starter. Too much information. Too much blah. Too much CYA verbiage.  Here's the solution:

4 sections all painted - floors, walls, ceiling to avoid any confusion:

Green zone: Contains all food and drink that Matron says is very, very good for us.

Amber zone: Contains all food and drink that Matron says is not too risky

Red Zone: Contains all food and drink that Matron says is bad for us - but it's our choice to enter this zone

Black zone: For all food and drink that Matron considers extremely bad for us even though it might be the tastiest selection - enter if you dare!

There you go.

It's worth a pilot, surely.

Food and drink retailing is saved.

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