Build It, Put Food in It, and They Will Come
Bloomberg reports: In what is being described as “A no brainer” and “…the next frontier” in retail mall shopping, mall owners and operators are turning to grocery chains and other food selling companies to fill their vacant square footage and lure customers into spending more at non-food stores.
Exemplifying this trend, Bloomberg cites that Westfield Group will be opening an Aldi supermarket in one of its Chicago-area shopping malls, and Macerich Co and General Growth Properties Inc also have plans to add food stores to their malls. This, some believe, is like solving two problems at once, as grocery stores bring customers to the location nine times per month on average, while traditional non-food mall stores only are visited three times in the same period. Grocery stores also require large amounts of space, and therefore will go a long way towards filling vacant stores left by other retailers who have recently gone out of business.
Of this strategy, Real Capital Analytics’ Managing Director Dan Fasulo stated, “The idea is that if people come to the mall to buy food they’ll buy other merchandise, as well.” He agreed that food “…definitely has the ability to drive more traffic and make a mall more profitable.”
View the full article on Bloomberg: Build It, Put Food in It, and They Will Come
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Posted by: Nina Turner