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Nordstrom and other department stores are betting on booze to boost sales
NEW YORK - On a recent mid-January afternoon, the eight seats at the Shoe Bar in Nordstrom's new women's store were empty. "It's Dry January. People are broke," a bartender observed. And yet, within half an hour, most of the stools had filled up. "There's a bar here!" a woman said happily. She ordered the gin-based signature cocktail called Husband Daycare and showed off a pair of gloves she'd bought upstairs. She planned to do more shopping after she finished.
"A round of drinks is a second pair of shoes," says David Bruno, a former buyer for Bergdorf Goodman and now a consultant on the elegant new Goodman's Bar, tucked into the second floor of that company's men's store, a few blocks east of Nordstrom. "A bar means people are spending more time within your walls. The more time they spend and the more loose they are, the easier the sale on everyone's side."
Goodman's Bar, which opened this month, is the newest in a growing number of watering holes inside Manhattan's higher-end department stores. Nordstrom introduced its Shoe Bar and Broadway Bar when its women's store opened in late October. Across the street, the men's store has a cafe with a similarly strong bar program. Saks Fifth Avenue, which underwent a $250 million renovation last year, is home to the Alpine-themed drinks lounge Le Chalet. Across town, inside Hudson Yards, Neiman Marcus has Bar Stanley, which features its own ambitious cocktails. (Nordstrom's downtown Seattle and Bellevue Square locations feature the Habitant lounge and bar.)
Destination dining inside luxury department stores is nothing new. Freds has been bringing ladies who lunch and shop into Barneys New York since it opened in 1996. More recently, Tiffany & Co.
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