Harry & David is opening brick-and-mortar locations again
/Harry and David Stores closed 38 stores during the pandemic, which was all its locations at the time, except for its flagship in Medford, Oregon and took its retail business online. However, that hasn't gone well.
The gourmet food brand opened six pop-ups during the holiday season inside Macy’s stores in New York City and Los Angeles, and is again ramping up its physical retail presence as standalone shops.
The holiday pilot “got the juices flowing” for Harry & David to focus more on brick-and-mortar retail, according to Greg Sarley, Harry & David’s SVP of merchandise revenue.
The result is a new Harry & David brick-and-mortar store, which just opened on Long Island. The new store has a tasting area and event space for demonstrations to enhance the experiential retail experience. That new store and the Macy’s pop-ups were recent “learning opportunities for us to dip our toe back in the water,” Sarley told Modern Retail.
Research is proving Harry & David right about reopening stores. Recent data show that most consumers would rather shop for food products in-store than online, according to Kassi Socha, senior director analyst at Gartner. A 2023 consumer survey by Gartner found that 78% of respondents prefer to buy food and nonalcoholic beverages in person, compared to 5% online using their desktop computers and 12% online using their mobile phones.
Harry & David is owned by 1-800-Flowers.com, which also owns other brands that are planned to be carried at Harry & David stores.
The goal is to further expand retail concepts heading into this year's holiday season, according to Sarley. Long term, he said, “My vision would have us have a brick-and-mortar location where we have a high concentration of (online) customers: the bigger cities on the coasts, as well as in the Midwest.”