SHOPS TO FILL NEED TO FEED

SUZANNE KAPNER
The New York Post

Retailers are coming around to an idea that department stores discovered decades ago, but then abandoned: If you feed shoppers, they will buy more.

Plans are currently under way, and still under wraps, for several new big-budget eateries at major stores, including one to be unveiled tonight at Bergdorf Goodman and two others that are part of a full-scale overhaul of the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship in New York.

"I used to beg retailers to incorporate food in their stores, and, as recently as five years ago, they had no interest," said Kevin Kelley, a partner in the design firm Shook Kelley. "Now stores are looking at restaurants as a way to attract consumers."

Facing increased competition and sluggish sales, retailers, especially the beleaguered department stores, are looking for ways to reinvent themselves. In turning to food, they are taking a cue from European counterparts, stores like Selfridges and Harrods in London and Printemps in Paris that have long served up all sorts of goodies to weary shoppers.

It was a notion that department stores discovered long ago, during their heyday in the 1950s and 1960s, when women gladly took a break from shopping to lunch at the Garden Room in Abraham & Strauss or sip tea at the Walnut Room in Marshall Field's.

Like so much else that once made department stores special, many of those restaurants soon went the way of free gift wrapping and home delivery.

"In the last decade, the restaurants that still existed were either run down or not a strategic focus for retailers," said Craig Johnson of Customer Growth Partners.

Department stores aren't the only retailers rediscovering food. Consumer electronics chain Best Buy is testing a café in a store in Lincoln Park, Chicago, and specialty retailer Tommy Bahama has added restaurants to seven of its 43 stores. Barnes & Noble, meanwhile, has for years relied on cafés to give its stores a coffee-shop type atmosphere, where people linger for hours.

But department stores are under the most pressure to reinvent themselves, and several large stores are rediscovering that food can fatten the bottom line.

People who eat at in-store restaurants tend to spend double the amount of time in the store and buy 30 percent more than they would have had they not eaten, said Craig Childress, director of prototype design research for Envirosell.

At Tommy Bahama, for instance, stores that have adjoining restaurants see double the retail sales per square foot compared with standalone stores, said George Santacroce, the company's president of retail.

Kelley, of Shook Kelley, said he started to notice the trend in Los Angeles several years ago when celebrities such as Paris Hilton began lunching at Mauro's Café at Fred Segal. Across the country, Fred's at Barneys New York, became a draw for the fashion crowd when it was elevated from the store's basement to its top floor.

At least two new restaurants are planned for the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship: one on the second floor, designed by Gabellini Associates, that will feature a wrap-around bar and décor that changes with the seasons, and another on the fifth floor designed by IIBYIV Design Associates, sources said. Saks declined to comment on its renovation plans.

Interior designer Kelly Wearstler is creating a new restaurant for Bergdorf Goodman on the seventh floor overlooking Central Park. Scheduled to open in October, BG, as the new restaurant is to be called, is seeking to rival Fred's as a draw for the rich and beautiful.

"We are hoping this will be a coveted lunch and cocktail ticket," said Bergdorf's Linda Fargo.