Upscale Retailers Embrace In-Store Restaurants
Barneys, Tiffany’s and Neiman Marcus are among department stores putting in eateries to attract shoppers.
Jun 28, 2019
NEW YORK–Retailers are opening restaurants inside their stores to boost sales, CNBC reports. For example, the Barneys department store chain has five Freds restaurants in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Beverly Hills, Calif., with another one slated to open in the fall in Boston.
“If you asked me five years ago if we were in the restaurant business, I would say, I don’t know if there was a strategy behind it,” said Barneys CEO Daniella Vitale. “In hindsight, we should have moved much more quickly to make sure there were restaurants in all of our stores. ... We won’t do a project anymore without a big restaurant component.”
Shoppers can dine at The Zodiac Room at a New York Neiman Marcus location, while the soon-to-open Nordstrom’s flagship location for women will have six separate foodservice areas. Restoration Hardware has six locations with restaurants, while Ralph Lauren has three coffee shops in New York stores.
Tiffany & Co. runs the Blue Box Café at the flagship store in New York. “We are always looking for new and exciting opportunities and concepts to engage our customers,” said Richard Moore, divisional vice president of global store design and creative visual merchandising at Tiffany. “If we feel a dining experience will amplify and excite a new or current location, we will explore those possibilities.”
“Retail in general needs to stimulate a person’s senses—all five of them,” said Jared Epstein, vice president and principal at Aurora Capital Associates. “But not every retailer has the brand awareness, brand positioning or the capability to manage and operate a food-and-beverage establishment.”
Readers of NACS Magazine know the trend isn’t new to convenience stores, which have increasingly been adding in-store dining. Each month, NACS Magazine takes readers on a culinary journey in the Gas Station Gourmet column. Check out this recent look at Joe’s Kansas City Bar-B-Que, a gas station serving up award-winning barbeque. Joe’s also was featured in a 2015 NACS Ideas 2 Go video. And the magazine’s Store Tour column offers a look at the innovative approaches c-stores are taking—don’t miss the June feature on the new Shell Select in Louisville, Kentucky.
Vendor Management
