You Can Now Get Food Delivered While Shopping
It will be served to you wherever you are — and on real china — while browsing the racks at Nordstrom in NYC.
There you are, flipping through hangers of department-store designer dresses — arms full of things to try on — and suddenly you’re starving. Do you stop in the middle of your shopping expedition, abandon all your carefully selected frocks in a heap and run out in desperate pursuit of a bite to eat? Or do you slog on, schlepping to the try-on room with your stomach growling up a storm and your head feeling woozy?
At Nordstrom’s new flagship store in NYC, that is simply not a concern. Why? Because all you have to do is flag a salesperson wearing a headset, order a meal without breaking your shopping stride, and tuck right in amidst the racks of clothes and rows of shoes. Yep, wherever you are in Nordstrom’s just-opened 320,000-square-foot, seven-floor midtown Manhattan store, someone will be dispatched bring you your choice of eight different dishes, on real china ... not some flimsy disposable to-go container.
"Hungry shoppers losing focus while trying on an Isabel Marant dress (floor 3) can snack on pear, kale, and blue cheese salad," Bloomberg reports. "Customers wavering over a Givenchy coat (floor 4) can chew on it over a double-beef cheeseburger or stop at the Shoe Bar for a martini. Cocktails, wine, and coffee can also be ordered on floors with a liquor license (specifically, floors numbered 5, 3, and 2, plus lower level 1 and, of course, the restaurants at lower level 2)."
Yes, for real. "Select menu items can be ordered within the levels of Broadway Bar and Shoe Bar, on levels 2 and lower level 1, respectively," a Nordstrom spokesperson confirmed to FN Dish via email. "The store can also accommodate delivering menu items anywhere throughout the store, should one request it."
Yes, it’s a peckish lunchtime shopper’s dream come true.
And yes, Nordstrom’s go-big-or-go-home decision-makers are aware that they are risking spillage and staining on the merchandise. They’re basically OK with that.
"That’s the cost of doing business," Nordstrom’s vice president of restaurant operations, Vincent Rossetti, told Bloomberg, adding that the food and beverage offerings are intended as a customer amenity and also "as blood sugar maintenance — to keep shoppers in stores longer."
If you’d rather maintain your blood sugar at an actual restaurant while you shop, you can do that, too. The new flagship store offers a host of eateries (and drinkeries) in which to do so, overseen by chefs including James Beard Award recipient Tom Douglas and James Beard nominee Ethan Stowell and many of them far less pricey and far more generous than you might imagine in a store packed with designer duds.
Apparently restaurants are more of a thing at Nordstrom than you might imagine, too. One-quarter of all purchases at all Nordstrom stores are for food and beverages, according to Bloomberg.
I guess, if you can’t afford a $2,290 Carolina Herrera sweater dress, you can at least drown your sorrows in a $20 burger and fries, a $12 chef’s salad or a $10 bowl of clam chowder. Or heck, eat them all — you don’t have to worry about fitting into that dress anyway.
Photo: Nordstrom
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