A Shift in Consumer Habits Post-Pandemic Spark a More Diverse Array of Retail Options

The post-pandemic consumer has undergone a shift in habits that has actively fostered a heightened focus on wellness. In response, it has sparked the developing trend among a wider variety of brands related to wellness, healthcare, fitness, recreational sports, pets and children to take retail storefronts as they seek increased visibility and proximity to customers. Although some of these uses did not typically establish locations in street level storefront spaces, the interest to be more in the forefront is being driven by their increasing importance and higher level of priority among Americans. The rise in new tenant categories, which is “at least in some part due to the pandemic” couldn’t have come at a more opportune time since the pandemic’s retail shakeout left many landlords faced with a large number of vacant stores. Cited examples include the opening last year in New Jersey of a golf-simulator club that replaced a grocery store and an IV drip center that now operates in a strip mall alongside co-tenants Starbucks and Panda Express. The continued expansion of health and wellness sectors has sparked the “so-called medtail movement.” Chains such as IV infusion center operator Restore Hyper Wellness, Freeze & Float’s hot and cold therapy spas, and laser treatment provider Simplicity Laser are increasingly popping up in retail storefronts along with a wide array of services traditionally offered on hospital campuses such as the planned expansion to New Jersey by Tennessee-based national chain IVX Health, which operates medical infusion-and-injection-therapy sites.

Further broadening retail options is a “proliferation of grocers targeting the ethnically diverse United States, some of which have grown beyond neighborhood mom-and-pop stores into chains with regional and national reach. “Last September, Korean grocer Jagalchi replaced a 75,000-square-foot J.C. Penney anchor space at Serramonte Center in Daly City, California, while some smaller independent and ethnic grocery operators have become attracted to the size and neighborhood locations of recently vacated Rite Aid stores. In addition, a new crop of digital native companies are opening brick-and-mortar locations such as discount furniture and homeware retailer Wayfair which will be debuting its third large-format, roughly 144,000-square-foot store in early 2027 at the Rich Hill shopping center in Yonkers. In response to the rise in tenant categories, Los Angeles-based retail landlord Macerich reportedly stated that while key legacy retailers will always be a part of the firm’s shopping centers, the company is also looking at digitally native, emerging, entertainment, and medical brands —making the choices among uses “unprecedented today.”

Source:    https://product.costar.com/home/news/479813181