It doesn’t get any more obvious than this: A large, high-profile store once occupied by a national retail chain is becoming a large, high-profile store occupied by a national restaurant chain.
Welcome to the state of retailing circa 2019.
With the opening next month of what will be the largest Starbucks in the world in the space that was built for and occupied by Crate & Barrel for 27 years until it closed last year, the cycle that is increasingly coming to define the retailing business has perhaps its most obvious example.
The new Starbucks will occupy all 43,000 square feet of the glass-sheathed store on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Erie Street in the heart of Chicago’s Magnificent Mile shopping district. Part of its Reserve Roastery brand—its third in the U.S. and sixth worldwide—the store will feature a massive coffee roasting facility as well as a bar and expanded food options. The company calls its Roastery stores “theatrical, experiential shrines to coffee passions”—and does so with a straight face.
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The four-story building was essentially the flagship for Crate & Barrel and served as much an advertising and marketing role as a traditional retail store role given the huge crowds of locals and tourists who regularly shop the Magnificent Mile stretch. One has to assume the rent demands of the prestigious space forced the company’s hand when it came time for its lease renewal. Crate & Barrel exited a similarly high-profile location on New York’s Madison Avenue several years ago for what are believed to be similar reasons.
But the store’s replacement by a hospitality business is very much part of the bigger trend in retailing. Shopping malls are increasingly being filled by restaurants, coffee shops, smoothie kiosks and all manner of entertainment businesses. The massive new American Dream mall opening later this month in New Jersey will feature a majority of non-store tenants, seemingly a first for a major shopping center.
Source: Forbes