Drive ins are negative contributors to community

Salt Lake.  A few months ago, Salt Lake City banned more drive ins on 2100 South in the Sugar House business district ("City council looks to transform single-family zoning across the city; bans Sugar House business district drive-thrus," Building Salt Lake., "One SLC neighborhood backs drive-thru ban as it transforms into ‘model walkable, transit-connected community’," Salt Lake Tribune).  That's pretty close to us, and Sugar House is where Sugar House Park is, where I'm on the board.

Needless to say, the local business advocacy group didn't agree.  But they did make a good point, that in times like covid, being able to do drive through/pick up helped them survive.

Between 900 and 1300 is the main district, although there is redevelopment and strip shopping and a couple extant older buildings between 700 and 900.  There was an ice cream manufacturing plant, now slated for housing.

There are a couple shopping centers, a Smith's (Kroger) and a Natural Grocers, some extant liner retail on 2100 South, and some new buildings with decent restaurants on the ground floor.  There is some perpendicular retail on side streets, but it tends to not do so well unless it's destination.

But overall since the region's development paradigm is sprawl, drive ins are huge.  Suzanne is into them.  I'm not.  But we do succumb.

(Rachel Rydalch | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Chick-fil-A on 2100 South in Sugar House has historically generated a long drive-thru line, Tuesday, March 8, 2022. A proposal before the City Council would ban new drive-thrus from opening in dense commercial areas of the neighborhood.

On 2100 South is a Chick Fil A (terrible, expensive food) which tends to block traffic.  2100 South is pretty narrow, two narrow lanes in each direction.  So this is a problem.  It's likely what generated the call for action.

The other drive throughs (CVS, Walgreens, McDonald's, Cafe Rio--terrible food, ate there once, never again, a couple banks) are able to provide enough queuing capacity on site to accommodate use.  Although CFA did redo their access pattern and it did reduce traffic.

OTOH, 1300 East and 700 East are major roads abutting the district, and they are set up for drive throughs in a way that 2100 South isn't.

DC.  In DC, drive throughs aren't allowed in C2 commercial districts, those are the ones that abut rowhouse residential districts. Gas stations require a special exception review.  Drive throughs and gas stations are matter of right in C3 districts.  

One such district abuts H Street NE ("H Street NE nightlife district, failing?," "A follow up on the H Street article: Learning from Philadelphia | More sophisticated daypart, retail, cultural, and experience planning," "The community development approach and the revitalization of DC's H Street corridor: congruent or oppositional approaches?," 2013, and "DC and streetcars #4: from the standpoint of stoking real estate development, the line is incredibly successful and it isn't even in service yet, and now that development is extending eastward past 15th Street," 2015) and when we were addressing zoning issues 20ish years ago, we weren't sophisticated enough to try to downzone the 1400 block and adjoining block on Maryland Avenue.to C2.  At the time there was a Sonic on Maryland Avenue.

It's since been replaced with a Chick Fil A, and on the other side a gas station came in ("360 Apartment building + Giant Supermarket vs. a BP gas station, which would you choose?" 2013) it was during the time of the Fenty Administration and they had zero interest in or knowledge of place values in communities.  

Like a lot of administrations, to them any development was good development.  (Like for Walmart a few years later, "Walmart to close one of its three DC stores.")

Article states that drive throughs are negative contributors to community ("Mega drive-throughs explain everything wrong with American cities," Vox).  They are probably "fine" in terms of "the economy," although drive throughs tend to be chains, and chains contribute less to the local economy than independently owned locally based stores.

There's no question they don't contribute to community, they cause environmental issues (exhausst, poor use of space), they puncture the street plane and make it difficult for walking.

Maria Zivarts on Twitter makes a good point about the difference between a coffee shop that is a drive through serving 20 cars versus a walk up shop serving 20 people.  Not to mention the locally owned store likely contributes to the community in ways that a chain store doesn't.

Last week for the first time I went to Loki Coffee on 900 South ("A Utah couple open a cafe, aiming for ‘a West Coast vibe and East Coast efficiency’," Salt Lake Tribune).  Of course, most of the tables were used by people on their computers.  But it was a great vibe.  

There were people sitting out front--they need tables and chairs and a patio.  The block is an odd one for retail in that the buildings are all detached, and the road is wide.  OTOH, a lot of the lots have a big front yard and the buildings are attractive and it's in the center city with higher population density.

Loki Coffee.  Photo: Bethany Baker, Salt Lake Tribune.

I think Loki Coffee has a wide range of events scheduled for April.

Something you won't find in a drive through/chain establishment.

Zoning changes to protect place value,  Making neighborhood abutting commercial districts off limits to drive throughs is a good start.  Directing drive throughs to places where the land use context better supports them is an acceptable compromise.  At the very least require review.  It could be there are some instances depending on the size of the lot, queuing capacity, and type of business, where a drive through is less obtrusive, like a pharmacy.

Department stores are an "urban technology" built for walking not driving

State Street Shopping District, Chicago, 1984, Chicago Sun Times photo.

There is a letter to the editor in the Post "Save an endangered species: The American department store,"  responding to the article "Macy's and other department stores are an endangered species," opining about the difference between department stores in European cities like London and Paris.  

It completely misses the point.  Those are walking cities.  For the most part we don't have walking cities in the US.  We have car cities.

-- "Responding to retail decay in Friendship Heights (DC/Montgomery County, Maryland)," 2023
-- "Friendship Heights and the production of retail decay," 2020
-- "Urban decay and sprawl: one community's gain at the expense of another's," 2011
 -- "A brief lesson in "incentivizing" supermarkets and department stores," 2007 
 -- "Why it's okay to give tax increment financing to department stores but you still need to think long and hard about where you put your money," 2007 
-- "Turnabout is fair play: why Topher Matthews/GGW is wrong about TIF incentives for a departmentun store in Georgetown," 2012

Plus center city downtowns in the US aren't the same kind of shopping draw as they were 50+ years ago, at least for larger cities--lots of smaller cities in the US and Europe are seeing their retail districts decimated.  For the most part, suburbanites are content shopping near home.

But what a difference between a downtown store and suburban mall location in terms of quality store offering.  

The DC Downtown Hecht's was a grand store.  And it paled by comparison to Macy's in Herald Square in Manhattan or in Union Square in San Francisco or in Downtown Chicago.  Or the city-based stores, like Hudson's in Detroit, from our youth.

Suburban mall stores tend to be dingy.

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From the San Francisco Chronicle, "Union Square once was the center of San Francisco. Now it’s off the map," 

The terrain in the retail zone centered on the actual Union Square, an area that, for decades, was the busiest downtown retail district outside New York and Chicago, is in sorry shape.

... There’s been ample attention to the empty spaces within the no-longer-Westfield shopping mall, from the former Nordstrom on down, and the numbing procession of “for rent” signs along Powell Street that offer a bleak welcome to cable car riders. To me, though, the 200 block of Sutter Street tells a story even more grim. 

Of the 15 retail spaces on the block, 12 are vacant. Two “store closing sale” signs are taped near the door of one shop front, and judging from the emptiness within, they’ve been there awhile. Across the way, there’s a “support small business” sign in the window of a falafel shop with the slogan “Where food takes flight.” Indeed it has; the space sits empty. 

.. The numbers downplay the sense of desolation. One vacant space that Banana Republic occupied from 1997 until last year stretches for nearly half a block. This isn’t a precarious fringe block, either. Nearly all the buildings are gorgeous masonry, built in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake. Banana Republic’s former flagship with its arched grandeur began life as the White House, a department store that opened in 1908 with a design by architect Albert Pissis and closed in 1965. 

... San Francisco has changed immeasurably since “everyone” visited Union Square on a semi-regular basis, whether they were looking for a night on the town or a place to buy the basics. Now the happening neighborhoods are Hayes Valley or Dogpatch or the Mission, depending on your inclination. Tourists are as likely to visit Haight-Ashbury or the Castro as Fisherman’s Wharf. 

Presidio Tunnel Tops and Crane Cove Park offer connections to the bay that would have been inconceivable in the 1990s — when the arrival of Yerba Buena Gardens, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and an expanded convention center prompted another planner to comment to the Chronicle how the changes along Mission Street and directly south “will really shift the center of gravity.”

Also see "Behind the Macy’s closure: ‘This is a Union Square problem. Not a San Francisco problem’" 

“Union Square doesn’t need to exist in the modern framework of local consumer demand,” said Christopher Thornberg, an economist and founder of Beacon Economics. He said with fewer people going downtown for work in San Francisco’s urban core, big shopping centers like Union Square don’t make economic sense. 

“This is a Union Square problem. Not a San Francisco problem,” Thornberg said. He said San Francisco’s low unemployment rate, and hyperactive venture capital sector, mean “it’s a great economy. It’s just that this economy doesn’t need a Union Square.” 

More broadly, he said, the same market forces that brought down Sears and JCPenney were now converging on Macy’s bottom line, delayed only by the “crazy surge in post-pandemic spending” once social distancing and other restrictions were lifted.

Responding to retail decay in Friendship Heights (DC/Montgomery County, Maryland)

 I've written about the decline of this once thriving commercial district:

-- "Friendship Heights and the production of retail decay," 2020

The retail killer Ashkenasy (they wrecked a couple locations in Baltimore including Harborplace, and haven't been great managers of Union Station's retail) owned Mazza Gallerie for awhile, it went into foreclosure.  Once home to a Neiman-Marcus department store, now closed, it's going to be torn down and redeveloped into retail and housing.

WTOP reports that DC and MoCo are working to create a business improvement district to help improve the area ("Friendship Heights BID? DC and Montgomery Co. are working on it").

In the beginning of my Main Street days (2002) districts like Dupont Circle pushed for being included. 

I scoffed, saying that they had plenty of resources, and neighborhood commercial districts didn't.  The reality is that then successful districts like Friendship Heights and Georgetown still faced voracious competition, but from the suburbs ("Turnabout is fair play: why Topher Matthews/GGW is wrong about TIF incentives for a department store in Georgetown," 2012).

So I was missing the point. The lesson from Main Street and BIDs and the original Downtown management program in Corning New York in the early 1960s, is that _all_ such districts need ongoing management so they can be their best, compete with other districts, recruit, stay on top of possible negative changes, etc.

So now that FH is super duper languishing they are considering creating a business improvement district. Obviously this should have been done years ago, especially as department stores began to falter and DC invested in other areas, as did Montgomery County.

A tale of three supermarket companies and innovation: Kroger; Safeway; Albertsons

There was an article in my newsfeed that Kroger, the largest supermarket company, is going to buy Albertsons, the second largest supermarket company ("Albertsons merger with Kroger could be announced this week," CNBC.

A few years ago, Albertsons bought Safeway and its banners.

Kroger.  While Kroger is an impressive company, I have an entry about how they are a great example of what I call "stranded best practice" in that, with a couple of exceptions, they aren't very good at transferring and adapting best practice from one chain to another.

-- "Problem solvers vs. possibility thinkers (and Kroger) ," 2017

Photo: Dave Rossman for the Houston Chronicle.

Besides loyalty programs, the primary exception is the Marketplace format ("Big or small? Retailers take different tacks on store size," Supermarket News), based on Fred Meyer, and like Target and Walmart, which adds general merchandise to the grocery store.  It's not necessarily "every day" low price, as the image of Walmart and Target is, and the range of items isn't quite as large, but they have frequent sales which makes it a viable competitor.

But I think the primary purpose is to make it harder for Walmart and Target to open stores in areas where Kroger operates. (It also helps that your general merchandise purchases can tally up points to save money on gasoline.)

They also bought the New York City based Murray's Cheese store and ported it as the specialty cheese section to their stores across the country.

Kroger is also a leader in store brands--we prefer for example their store brand beans or chicken broth to other store brands, and to national brands.

But while some of their divisions have augmented stores with specialty departments, like "Fresh Fare" in Texas slowly being ported to other markets but seemingly only for banners named Kroger ("Kroger opens another Fresh Fare store in Ohio," Drug Store News, 2008), or the store by their headquarters in Cincinnati ("Inside Kroger’s New Downtown Grocery Concept and Eatery," Cincinnati Magazine) which has a food hall featuring locally owned restaurants, and they bought more upscale chains like Harris-Teeter and Mariano's (Chicago), those practices don't end up in other chains, definitely not the way that Giant-Eagle (Market District) and HEB (Central Market) have a small set of upscale stores, and Giant-Eagle has branded its convenience store-gas stations as GetGo, featuring Market District and Giant-Eagle brands.  (In fact, Kroger had a massive set of convenience stores, didn't learn from Giant-Eagle, and sold most of them off).

Some people report that under Kroger, Mariano's is even being "dumbed down," becoming less special.

Safeway.  To me, Safeway is most impressive for its destruction of shareholder value.  It bought chains in Chicago ("How Dominick's Lost its Way in Chicago," Chicago Business Journal) and Philadelphia, running them out of business, and chains in Texas (Randall's and Tom Thumb) are less successful than when they bought them.  From the article:

Perhaps the key reason why Dominick's ultimately was doomed is something much trickier to quantify — a failure of zestful imagination across the boards. To put it bluntly, Dominick's had become an immensely boring grocery shopping experience. Nothing in the way management designed or merchandised the stores made them distinctive enough to engage shoppers and build loyalty. Any sort of "wow factor" was totally absent.

It cost the company billions of dollars.  How did that not end up with the CEO getting fired?

But they've been very successful with their private brands, like what was called Safeway Select, now Signature Select.  I miss some of those products, like Asian Stir Fry frozen vegetables and seltzers here.  Plus, their loyalty program and coupon doubling (they probably don't do that now).

Petworth, DC.

And earlier than some of their competitors, they began opening new stores in center cities, starting with Portland in 2003. DC has a couple of those stores, Downtown at CityVista, and the Petworth store, which became the ground floor of a multiunit apartment building, which they repeated in Capitol Hill.

The company always remained committed to DC proper, having the most stores of any chain in the city (although they closed small neighborhood stores in favor of larger stores serving multiple neighborhoods to which residents "had" to drive.)

Albertson's today isn't really the same company it was 20 years ago.  It went through an iteration of independence, then it was bought by Supervalu--now no longer in existence itself, a wholesaler and supermarket chain owner, but they sold off a huge amount of stores to private equity (Cerberus) and then the private equity company fixed those stores and bought the rest.

One of their moves was to buy United Supermarkets in Texas, a small company, but one with two specialty divisions, a Hispanic oriented market, and an upscale market, like HEB's Central Market, called Market Street.

Then they bought Safeway, allegedly for their management prowess, but really for their private brands.  They took off the Safeway name--now it's Signature Select, etc. and ported them to all the Albertson's chains, the way that Kroger uses the Kroger brand across chains (although maybe not at H-T and Mariano's).

One of the amazing things Albertson's has done is to take the Market Street format and slowly apply it to other banners.  

For example, there are two stores in Boise--where the company is headquartered, and I guess one now in Montana that are basically Market Streets, super stores.  

Patio furniture displayed in the parking lot of the Broadway Albertson's, Boise.

I was blown away by the one in Boise, next to Boise State University and Downtown, except for the high prices ("Albertsons Market Street Store is a Food Paradise" Progressive Grocer).  It has a second story bar, a ground floor cafe, grass fed beef featuring ranches from the region, creative displays even outside the store.

Conclusion.  So unlike Kroger with what I call stranded best practice, and unlike Safeway in how they destroyed store banners they bought losing billions in the process, the latest iteration of Albertson's under private equity shows innovation.

If Kroger buys Albertson's my sense is that the innovativeness of Albertson's will be left to die.  And I doubt that Kroger will adopt Signature Select instead of the Kroger brand, thereby destroying lots of value and brand equity there.  Although it's possible they'd let those brands continue being offered in the Albertson's banners.

I don't think the acquisition will result in better choices and options for grocery patrons.  But it probably won't hurt.  And outside of some markets, like California and Texas, they don't really compete.

It's possible, with Kroger as the buyer, that they will reduce prices in Albertson's chains, which tend to be higher than Kroger chain pricing.

Friendship Heights and the production of retail decay

The Washington Post has a story, "Friendship Heights, once known as a hub for high-end shopping, is struggling as the pandemic accelerates an exodus of retailers," about the decline of Friendship Heights, a suburban shopping district on the border of DC and Montgomery County, Maryland.  

Two of the department stores on the DC side are closing--one chain, Lord & Taylor, is going out of business altogether and the Mazza Gallerie shopping center was in foreclosure ("Ashkenazy's Mazza Gallerie mall sold at auction," Washington Business Journal).

Friendship Heights in 1983.  Woodward & Lothrop in the middle, the GEICO parking deck to its rear, and Mazza Gallerie above, with Lord & Taylor to the upper right.

It had been anchored by four department stores--Neiman-Marcus, located in the Mazza Gallerie shopping mall and Lord & Taylor on the DC side, and Woodward & Lothrop (succeeded by Hechts, now Bloomingdales) and Saks Fifth Avenue on the Maryland side, complemented by a large number of retail stores from high end to more recently discount, restaurants, movie theaters, and supermarkets.

The area is also home to the Geico insurance company headquarters (a very early example of a corporation leaving a downtown location for the suburbs, which they did in 1959), has a number of multiunit residential buildings, a hotel, and is close to upscale residential areas in both DC and Maryland.

It was relatively unique in that three of the four department stores are free standing, not part of a single consolidated shopping mall. (Although this form was typical of how "town shopping districts" were organized before the 1960s.)

Urban decay as a planning concept.  The California planning regulation system has a term called "urban decay" which takes into account the impact of new development on existing places and retail districts:

-- "Urban decay and sprawl: one community's gain at the expense of another's," 2011

This comes out of the recognition that the development of suburban shopping malls and the relocating of city-based firms to suburban locations came at the expense of center city and town locations in the core of a metropolitan area, that while the overall pie of development may have grown, certain areas ended up suffering and losing significant economic activity.

Built in 1954, Northland Shopping Center was one of the nation's first suburban shopping centers.  Created by JL Hudson Department Store believing that Detroit's residents were going to move out to the suburbs, the company built malls north, east (Eastland), west (Westland), and south (Southland) and Dowtown Detroit.  It shouldn't be a surprise that Detroit's Downtown shopping district declined to nothingness.

Approvals vis a vis urban decay in California may include mitigation steps.

Government facilitation of retail decay.  I raise this because the article points out the decline was facilitated and accelerated by the DC Government investment in the CityCenterDC project, to where many high end smaller retailers (not department stores) moved, as the project was developed in the last 10 years.

(City Center is built on the site of the former DC Convention Center and is located Downtown.)

It was recognizing that the city government's facilitation of new retail and mixed use development in places like CityCenterDC, The Wharf (southwest waterfront), and Navy Yard (southeast waterfront) comes at the expense of existing commercial areas (Capitol Hill, Georgetown, Golden Triangle, Friendship Heights, etc.) that I realized that simultaneously there should be planning and economic development supports to the existing areas, in order to maintain their competitiveness in the face of the subsidized development of new destinations.

For the most part this hasn't happened, except when instigated by a particular property owner or new development.

I wrote about this a couple times, in part using the example of Georgetown, because Georgetown's centrality as a regional shopping destination has declined in the face of new competition within and outside of the city: 

 -- "A brief lesson in "incentivizing" supermarkets and department stores," 2007 

 -- "Why it's okay to give tax increment financing to department stores but you still need to think long and hard about where you put your money," 2007 

-- "Turnabout is fair play: why Topher Matthews/GGW is wrong about TIF incentives for a department store in Georgetown," 2012

Plus, Georgetown Park shopping "mall" has had all of the same problems as Friendship Heights, for decades, accentuated by the fact that it was an internally focused retail property in a shopping district that is outdoors focused.

There is a limit to how much retail a local economy can support.  The fact is that there is only so much development capacity within a place, which is a function of commercial and residential demand, and spending decisions of the existing consumer base (residents and office workers + tourists).

1.  Office workers mostly spend money in limited ways on convenience retail and food, mostly quick service.  So even if there are many workers, they don't shop much at specialty stores, department stores, etc.

The rule of thumb I learned was that office workers support 2 s.f. of retail and 5 s.f. of restaurant.  Tot that up for a proposed project and you'll see that mostly the amount of retail supported by office workers is smaller than you might think.  Although some organizations may take steps to support retail by not creating on-site cafeterias, etc., which is the case with Amazon in Seattle, etc.

And it's mostly a myth that nonresident workers will "stop at a city-located store on the commute trip home."  Instead, mostly people shop in their own communities.

2.  Residents support up to 7.5 s.f. of retail, distributed across a range of shopping types from neighborhood retail (pharmacy, supermarket, dry cleaners, restaurants) to intra-city regional, providing options like Downtown's department store or other shopping destinations like Friendship Heights or the Target and other big box stores at DC/USA in Columbia Heights.

Even with 720,000 or so residents that's support for about 5,400,000 s.f., and the city has much more retail space than that, and it continues to add to this supply as "new or renewed intra-city destinations" are created such as Union Market, H Street, or Ivy City.

3.  Suburban residents don't have much call to shop in DC, they have all the retail present within DC and more in Montgomery and Fairfax Counties especially, but also in other jurisdictions (although Prince George's residents complain that they are under-served and must go to other places to meet their full range of shopping needs).  ... even though the Downtown Macy's Department Store is significantly better than suburban stores.

4.  Tourists spend money yes, but not in ways that support a wide range of retail.  The tourists who come to DC may stay in DC or in suburban locations.  Lodging revenues are mostly captured by nonresident corporations based elsewhere.  Depending on the income level of the tourist, they are most likely to spend their money on food, lodging, and entrance fees, and not on other retail.

International tourists tend to stay in the city and spend more on retail ("Impact of Shopping Tourism for the Retail Trade as a Strategy for the Local Development of Cities," Frontiers in Psychology), but this stream of visitors can be negatively impacted by US public diplomacy.  For example, before the pandemic, one of the largest origin countries for tourism was China.  When your nation's president is stoking a trade war with China, that reduces tourism.

Intra-city sprawl and retail decay.  Sprawl is not merely a suburban phenomenon.  Intra city sprawl is created by supporting new development and districts without fully taking into account overall demand as well as the impact on existing places--for example, providing tax incentives to shopping centers anchored by Home Depot or Lowes, but not providing any supports to neighborhood-based hardware stores.

Note that this isn't unique to DC.  New York City has facilitated intra-city sprawl and retail decay through the fostering of the development of Hudson Yards ("What Is the Impact of Hudson Yards on the Manhattan Office Market," National Real Estate Investor; "Hudson Yards shifting New York center of gravity," JLL; "Hudson Yards Is Manhattan's Biggest, Newest, Slickest Gated Community," New York Times).  

Montgomery County Maryland's massive investment in Silver Spring comes at the expense of communities like Takoma Park.  The redevelopment of the White Flint district has contributed to the "decay" in Friendship Heights and to some extent Montgomery Mall.  

Fairfax County's focus on Tysons and the Silver Line subway has reshaped the development pattern in the county, making traditional suburban office developments much less successful ("Silver line reshaping commercial office market in Fairfax County"). Etc.

Conclusion.  I don't know what the solution is exactly.  (1) I do think that redevelopment planning needs to be more robust and extend to places like Georgetown or Friendship Heights, even if people think because those districts are in upscale areas, they don't need help.  (I sure didn't think that c. 2000, when I first got heavily involved in this kind of community revitalization.)

(2) The concept of urban/retail decay needs to be incorporated more widely into planning and development approval processes.

(3) Such planning efforts may need to cross borders, involving both City and County officials in a place like Friendship Heights.

(4) These efforts need to coincide with the development of renewed areas, rather than occur after the fact.

(5) There needs to be a program to mitigate negative impacts.  This could include the imposition of impact fees to provide a funding stream.  

Although with the pandemic, jurisdictions are unlikely to want to do this, for fear of pushing the possibility of new development away.  New development will be rare for quite some time in the face of the pandemic.

(6) Entrepreneurship development should be an element of the program.  The Downtown LA Retail Project and the Second Street initiative in Austin, Texas ("New Second Street district stores bringing occupancy to record 92 percent," Austin American-Statesman; "Austin Second St. district thriving," Austin Business Journal) are good examples of what can be done.)

Of course, even before the pandemic, retail has been on a significant downward slide because of the impact of e-commerce, and the pandemic has only accelerated this trend.

Shift from shopping to consume experiences.  One thing that is changing too is that people are less interested in buying and consuming stuff, and more interested in consuming "experiences."  Districts like the Wharf and Navy Yard are more about eating and drinking, doing things, and walking along the water, and less about buying stuff.  Long term, this has impact on retail as well.

Of course, the pandemic doubly impacts this because many of these experiences are indoors (concerts, restaurants, bars, events), which are currently unsafe.

A great opportunity to see the value in including coffee/food/beverage as an element of "traditional" retail

Shop Made in DC is a retail shop in Dupont Circle selling locally made items, but it includes a coffee bar, and also sells artisan foods made locally as well ("Holiday Shopping, Small Business Saturday, etc.," 2017).

The firm is opening a new store in the new Wharf district on the Southwest Waterfron ("Shop Made in D.C. opening second location," Washington Business Journal) but without the coffee bar.  From the article:

The new location will give Shop Made in D.C. the chance to test a purely retail format, said Price. In Dupont Circle, the venue combines both traditional retail with a casual food and beverage component that highlights local food companies and beverage producers. ...

Price and Babin signed a one-year lease for The Wharf space to test the concept in a more tourist-heavy location.

“I think The Wharf will actually surprise us with the amount of people that live closer to there coming in,” Price said. “And of course, being in a neighborhood that is very tourist driven is of interest to us.”

Whereas the Dupont store opens early on weekdays for the coffee crowd and has more limited hours on weekends, Price expects The Wharf location to be much busier on weekends and in the evenings. It will be open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily to start.

My sense is that their retail sales will be significantly diminished by the failure to include a coffee bar.

People eat and drink every day.

OTOH, people buy retail stuff that is physical goods, especially artisanal produced items which tend to cost more (cf. The Arts and Crafts Movement), infrequently.

And the Wharf District customer base is likely to be visiting more for eatertainment purchases, and will be less inclined to buy physical goods.