In a beautiful old building in Venice, which used to house a movie theatre, a new DESPAR store has opened. The elegant supermarket with its high ceilings and renovated frescoes, makes for a truly unique shopping experience.

Aspiag Service, the SPAR licence holder for North-Eastern Italy, has invested over 2.5m Euros in renovating the building and fitting the store: “We are aware of the privilege and responsibility of being in this outstanding location,” said a spokesperson for the company.

Sustainability instore and product offer

The new store in Venice makes use of equipment with a low environmental footprint. For example, the lighting is 100% LED and downlights have been installed directly on the store’s shelving, in order to preserve the building’s features and frescoes. The heat generated by the cooling units is fully reused for heating the store and producing hot water. Special units treat any steam and fumes generated instore, thus preventing odours and emissions. Doors on the refrigerated units and wall cabinets allow for energy savings and limit any humidity or cold air release into the store. From an aesthetic point of view, the low wooden shelving allows customers to fully appreciate the beauty of the room without any obstructions.

Within the sales surface of 580m², the store has an assortment of 8,700 SKUs, comprised almost exclusively of food items. It is equipped with seven checkouts, four of which are self-scanning stations, although when necessary, these can easily be turned into staffed checkouts, ensuring great standards of customer service.

The store has long opening hours, from 8 am to 9 pm, seven days a week, to meet customer demand. The store employs 41 people – a larger team than other similarly sized stores due to the longer opening hours.

The product range has been specifically adapted to suit local residents, providing a complete assortment for daily shopping needs. Thanks to its large choice of Food-to-Go products, it also caters for the needs of tourists, passers-by and students.

The coming months will see the launch of a home delivery service. At present, it is already possible to make reservations for items from the deli and bakery departments, introducing convenient solutions.

Investing in local community restorations

A building that was in a state of decay, DESPAR Nordest saw the potential it had and did all that was necessary to rescue it. The renovation process was supervised throughout by the Directorate for Architectural Heritage of Venice. All of the solutions developed for the store’s shelving, lighting and other systems had to be installed in such a way that the walls and their paintings would remain fully intact.

DESPAR Italia has previous experience of opening stores in historic buildings in the cities of Trento, Verona and Vicenza. The most recent example is the EUROSPAR store, which opened in 2014 in Trento in a building from the Renaissance era, Palazzo Nogarola Guarenti. Then too, the company invested about three million Euros and committed itself to protecting and preserving the works of art in the building.