First We Eat
Food is playing a more visible role in stores, making retail more about the community.
Food makes people happy and has always been in fashion. Now, brands are creating new shopping rituals by making food and fashion feed off of each other. When Todd Snyder designed his flagship store in New York, he made the centerpiece of the store a café, a tapas bar, and an in-shop barber. “I wanted to make it easier for people to shop,” Snyder said, “a café softens the place, making it less about shopping and more about community. Just a store is boring and you can do this online.”
We have long known that food plays a role in shaping trust and cooperation. Perhaps breaking bread at a place makes a store more intimate and homey and makes shoppers more relaxed and inclined to buy. By adding donuts and quiches to their Manhattan showrooms, home goods store ALT for Living saw a 30 percent increase of annual revenue.
H&M owned Arket has Nordic cafés in their stores to create a warmer feeling. Neiman Marcus partnered with wellness chef and entrepreneur Matthew Kenney to open a vegan cafe in their Beverly Hills store. 10 Corso Como, the fashion, art and design store serves chic Italian dishes in its outposts in Italy, China, Korea, and soon New York. What’s more, some store-restaurants have become destinations themselves: Tiffany opened a café in its New York flagship inspired by Breakfast at Tiffany’s; and Gucci now has a three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Florence.
Sources: The New York Times (October 26, 2017) | Vogue (November 10, 2017) | Journal of Consumer Psychology (Volume 27, Issue 1, January 2017) | Image: Laura Pittaccio