Making funeral branches more welcoming

15th December 2022

My name is Olivia Clinton, and I am here at Southern Co-op’s head office alongside my peers, Emma and Lexie for work experience as part of my T Level course with HSDC.

Recently I learnt more about designing stores and funeralcare branches when speaking to a lady called Sarah Lyford, who is the Associate Project Manager – Design, Implementation & Development for Southern Co-op. I asked Sarah to tell me a bit about herself and her role to give me a deeper and clearer understanding of what she does.

Sarah’s journey starts with her working in stores during her time at Portsmouth University, where she did property development and graduated in 2009. She then joined the refit team where they would go out and merchandise new stores. From this, she went into location planning – working out if a store would be viable in a certain location. Her most recent role, which she explained “in a nutshell”, she looks after a lot of designs for the sites that Southern Co-op owns and project manages the funeral branch refits.

For her role, Sarah uses AutoCAD – a computer aided design programme which helps create both 2D and 3D designs. Depending on the design and how complicated it is, a complete floor plan for a food store could take three to four hours. Within the design, Sarah explained that it is important to think about the customer journey through the food store. Things to think about would be where to have the till, which should always be at the end of the journey. Or the customer route through the store which is often zig zag from the entrance. Also, the back of house layout, the placement of where the goods deliveries come in and where the toilets can be located. Sustainable elements are also considered such as electric charging points, observing the gases used in the chillers, and solar panels. Sarah said: “I think of it almost like a jigsaw puzzle with having things to fit in but how and where to fit it in!”

This year, Sarah worked on refitting Southern Co-op’s largest funeral home in Portsmouth based in Fratton. She worked on making it more open plan and welcoming, changing it from dark and old fashioned colours, to bright and more neutral tones. Throughout this process Sarah sourced products and considered sustainability.

Having seen the before and after photos, the changes definitely created a clean and fresh atmosphere. I felt the biggest difference was removing a wall which used to be in front of clients as soon as they entered the funeral home. There is now a new front desk where this wall used to sit and people can be greeted by a person. The seating area also feels much more homely and comfortable. It is clear that Sarah’s design work has made a difference at this branch and probably many others.