Furniture store will use booze to sell you a sofa

Rene Rodriguez

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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 furniture-store chain has opened a 2400-square-metre showroom near downtown Miami that serves craft beer and wine to customers, in addition to the stores’ usual offerings of coffee, soft drinks and water.

The new store marks the start of a $US100 million ($133 million) expansion by City Furniture, which is headquartered in Tamarac and operates 17 showrooms and one outlet throughout southern Florida (along with 12 licensed Ashley HomeStore locations). The expansion will add beer and wine to all of the chain’s 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 fulfils two objectives: Give the chain a presence near downtown Miami, where the population has surged by 32 per cent since 2010, and offer the kind of experience-driven shopping that online e-commerce can’t match.

The City Furniture store is opening a big new outlet in Midtown Miami that will offer customers beer and wine while they pick out their couches. Photo: Charles Trainor Jr/Miami Herald/Tribune

“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 says that the wine and beer offerings have already proven popular at the Tamarac store, where the bottles started pouring in October. On the first weekend when libations were offered, 30 per cent of customers partook.

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

Although it sits just outside the Design District, the art-friendly neighbourhood known for its roster of galleries, restaurants and high-end shops, City Furniture will continue its sales tactics of affordable furniture and same-day or next-day delivery. The addition of wine and beer bars to City Furniture stores is the latest example of how bricks-and-mortar retailers are thinking of ways to survive in the era of online shopping.

A sofa collection at the City Furniture store, with the Miami skyline in the background. Photo: Charles Trainor Jr/Miami Herald/Tribune

“The retail industry is in a state of flux,” said Robert Granda, director of retail investment sales for the 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 in neighbouring Design District or Wynwood.

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

There is also the matter of the inevitable spillage. What happens when some tasty red blend gets splashed onto a white fabric couch?

“That’s the cost of doing business,” Koenig said. “It’s going to happen. We will replace the furniture. But we will also refill your glass.”