Beer, wine make furniture shopping an experience

MIAMI — If City Furniture has its way, you’ll be sipping a syrah while shopping for a sofa, or tasting Chablis when you’re trying out a chaise lounge.

The southern Florida furniture-store chain has opened a 26,000-squarefoot showroom near downtown Miami that serves customers craft beer and wine in addition to the stores’ usual offerings of coffee, soft drinks and water.

The new store marks the start of a $100 million expansion by City Furniture that will add beer and wine to all its locations and create four new or renovated showrooms by the end of 2019.

Andrew Koenig, vice president of operations and marketing for City Furniture, said the new store fulfills two objectives: give the chain a presence near downtown Miami, and offer the kind of experience-driven shopping that online e-commerce can’t match.

“The experience is great,” Koenig said. “You can walk around the store with a glass of wine or buy a beer at the bar, and our sales team is equipped with iPads that allow you to use your credit card or arrange financing while you’re lying on a mattress or sitting on the couch you want to buy.”

Koenig said the wine and beer offerings have already proved popular at the Tamarac store, where the bottles started pouring in October. On the first weekend when libations were offered, 30 percent of customers partook.

The drinks are sold for a nominal charge, although Koenig said he wants to eventually make the booze free.

The addition of wine and beer bars to City Furniture stores is the latest example of how brick-and-mortar retailers are thinking of ways to survive in the era of online shopping.

“The retail industry is in a state of flux,” said Robert Granda, director of retail investment sales for real estate firm Franklin Street. “There has been a generational shift, especially with millennials. The way that we experience retail now is a lot different than the way our parents experienced retail. Before, shopping had a sense of ‘going out’ to it. But e-commerce is about convenience and making things easy and ordering stuff from your house. Retailers have to compete with that now.”

Koenig said he doesn’t mind if people start dropping into the store for a quick, cheap drink before a night out.

“Personally, I would love it,” he said. “Because the minute you’re in the store, you’re thinking about furniture whether you realize it or not.”