Safeway's store at St Katharine Docks, London, is the most evolved meals to go operation in the UK. The store received a £2m refit last year to inject fun and excitement into shopping ­ chief executive Carlos Criado-Perez calls it retailtainment ­ and to serve the needs of office workers, its main customer base. Freshness is the theme of the store format, which dispenses a huge variety of meals from counters laid out round three sides of a large square in the "fresh to go" area. First stop is a sandwich counter offering 40 fillings in six store-baked breads. Sandwiches are made to order while customers wait, or pre-ordered by email or fax. A premium coffee machine does take-away cafe latte, cappuccino and expresso. The noodle bar offers over 150 noodle/sauce/protein combinations based on recipes from China, Singapore, Burma, Japan and Thailand. Meals are stir-fried to requirements in minutes by chefs. The sense of theatre is continued at the pasta counter, where fresh pasta is made hourly and the choice includes ribbons, noodles, shapes and filled, plus a range of sauces. Hot and cold meals are made to order. At the pizza counter, the "pizzaiolo" chef stretches and pulls pizza dough, making up the topping to customers' choice before cooking it an authentic brick lined pizza oven imported from Italy. The rotisserie does traditional rotisserie chicken and fresh hot southern fried using the store's own recipes. For customers in a hurry, there's a ready meal counter offering restaurant-standard Indian, Chinese and Mexican dishes, to order hot or cold. To provide the level of service needed for this type of operation, Safeway recruited staff with catering experience and provided extra training to encourage all staff to engage with customers. The store also has a welcoming interior, created with warmer colours and ceramic floor tiles ­ a first for a UK multiple ­ and a blackboard system for point of sale communication to add to the overall look of a local market. Packaging is kept to a minimum on fresh products so products can be clearly seen, their quality speaking for itself. {{FOCUS SPECIALS }}

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