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Retailers — from streetwear to luxury to basics — are putting coffee shops inside their brick-and-mortar stores to keep customers around longer and build community.
Why It Fits: Post-COVID, people, especially Gen Zers, are gravitating back to “third spaces” — places where people can be social and feel belonging outside their homes. By creating those spaces inside retail stores, it allows companies to subconsciously transform from fashion brands to lifestyle brands with their own culture… which crafts more brand loyalty.
Behind the Brews: No one likes to go shopping without some coffee in hand, so retailers are giving customers a one-stop shop.
- Uniqlo’s store in Midtown Manhattan is the first North American location to get a Uniqlo Coffee, which is already popular in stores throughout Japan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia.
- Women’s boutique Aritzia opened its coffee shop, A-OK Cafe, in 11 locations throughout Canada and in stores in Chicago and NYC.
- Ralph Lauren opened up Ralph’s Coffee in retail locations in New York and throughout Europe and Asia.
- Japanese retailer Muji took things to the next level by opening an entire food hall in NYC’s Chelsea Market that employs a robot barista named Jarvis.
Order Up: Trendy retail brands aren’t the only ones getting in their third-space bonafides. Grocery store Erewhon is the place to see and be seen when picking up an absurdly expensive smoothie with your milk and eggs. Emma Chamberlain’s Chamberlain Coffee is reverse-DTCing its company with a new shop. And Starbucks, which pioneered the in-retailer third space with its locations inside Barnes & Noble bookstores, is revamping its stores to recapture that vibe.
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