Department Stores Are Betting on Booze to Boost Retail

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 a half-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 the 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.”