5 things to watch in Western New York retail this year:
https://buffalonews.com/news/local/b...b21e4a73b.html
"When something moves quickly, they say it moves at the speed of light.
They might as well say it moves at the speed of retail.
Look how much the industry has changed just since Covid-19. Curbside pickup and grocery delivery went from nice-to-have options to must-have necessities. Online shopping has rocketed to new highs. And Amazon continues to corner the industry, pulling in record profits and increasing sales by billions of dollars year over year.
The rate of change shows no signs of slowing down this year.
The retail landscape in Western New York will continue to transform as state-licensed cannabis dispensaries open at a greater clip, retailers migrate out of the Boulevard and Eastern Hills malls to make way for much-anticipated town center projects, workers continue to form unions, stores tweak their self-checkout options and online retailers begin charging for returns.
More recreational dispensaries will open – if all goes well. There was a time that a license to open a recreational cannabis dispensary in Western New York seemed like a golden ticket – an exclusive pass that would set licensees on a path to riches as the first entrants into a lucrative new industry in the state.
But the road to getting open has been so bumpy that license holders are now more likely to inspire pity than envy.
With two injunctions spanning months and halting new store openings, licensees have been stuck in a holding pattern, with many sitting on real estate and paying bills on businesses they couldn’t open.
When the latest injunction lifted in the fall, it cleared the way for hundreds of license holders to finally get their businesses up and running.
“Their businesses may have been sidelined, but our current licensees remain wholeheartedly committed to the endeavor,” Tremaine Wright, chairwoman of the New York State Cannabis Control Board, said at a recent meeting.
The state had managed to grant 400 licenses before the latest injunction hit in August, and it plans to release another 250 licenses from the application window that closed Nov. 17. Those next licenses will be randomly awarded from among a pool of 1,500 applicants who have already secured store spaces.
Licensees are scrambling to get the necessary local and state approvals finalized, finish their buildouts, hire workers and get open, fearing another injunction will stop their progress.
Another one already is being sought.
Variscite NY Four and Variscite NY Five, the same party behind the first lawsuit that hobbled the region in September 2022, requested an injunction last month. They claim the rules for the most recent licensing window violate the Dormant Commerce Clause by discriminating against out-of-state residents, since priority is given to applicants who lived in a New York community disproportionately affected by cannabis enforcement.
If that injunction is granted, it could put new store openings on hold again.
“Challenges remain, but we remain hopeful as we look to the coming weeks and months, and anticipate licensees’ announcements of their grant openings,” Wright said.
Mall retailers will migrate. As the Eastern Hills and Boulevard malls begin to empty out in anticipation of town center projects at both sites, retailers inside are being forced to leave. That means they’ll either find new brick-and-mortar homes, become online-only entities or go out of business.
At Eastern Hills Mall, tenants with exterior entrances will be allowed to remain.
“It’s killing me to leave Boulevard after 27 years, but changes are great,” said Jimmylee Steinfeld, owner of TT New York, a popular gown boutique at Boulevard Mall. “I am one of the longest lasting tenants.”
Both the Clarence and Amherst malls gave tenants through the end of last year’s holiday shopping season to continue operating before having to leave.
The traditional shopping centers are being at least partially demolished to make way for town centers – a walkable mix of residential space, restaurants, retail, hotels and green space.
Most of the malls’ interior corridors will be gone, making room for broad sidewalks, parks, landscaped streets and exterior storefronts.
“An individual might go to a town center to visit a particular store, but the objective is to keep them there and give them enough reason to walk to other stores or just admire the great street scene or hang out in one of the pocket parks or go to a coffee shop,” said Carl Montante Jr., vice president of marketing and strategic initiatives at Uniland, which is transforming the Eastern Hills Mall with Mountain Development Corp.
Workers will continue to organize. What started with Spot Coffee in 2019 and made headlines around the world with Starbucks in 2021 continues in 2024 as workers organize unions.
Workers around Buffalo have organized with Workers United, a Philadelphia-headquartered union with 86,000 members in the United States and Canada across a variety of industries, including food service.
Workers at Spot Coffee, Starbucks, Remedy House, Lexington Co-op, Elmwood Taco and Subs and Tesla have all formed unions to collectively bargain for workers’ rights. The latest to begin organizing are workers at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, who are still determining which job titles would be included in collective bargaining.
“Unionizing is the best path to ensure that we, the workers at the Buffalo AKG, can all take pride of ownership and feel a secure sense of belonging in our workplace and the broader community,” Buffalo AKG workers said in a statement posted to social media.
A possibility for the next round of organizing workers to watch are pharmacists at retail chain pharmacies. Already, nonunion workers around the country at chains such as Walgreens, Rite Aid and CVS have walked off the job in protest of working conditions. The protests – which lasted up to three days in some parts of the country – were supported by the American Pharmacists Association, the industry’s largest professional organization.
Tasked with administering vaccines, answering phones and dealing with in-person customers while filling prescriptions, pharmacy workers said chains have cut staffing to dangerously low levels that prevent them from safely doing their jobs.
“We support every pharmacist’s right to work in an environment with staffing that supports your ability to provide patient care. We know that these are steps you deem necessary in order to be heard by your employer,” the APhA said in a statement responding to walkouts.
Self-checkout options will continue to evolve. When Aldi gets in on the action, you know there is no going back.
The German no-frills grocer, known for its commitment to its speedy cashiers, added self-checkout stations to the majority of its local stores in 2023.
Tops Markets made additional self-checkouts a priority during renovations at local stores. Craft store Michaels added self-checkouts for the first time. And several retail chains tweaked their self-checkout policies, including Target, which restricted its lanes to those with 10 items or fewer.
Retailers are trying to figure out how to perfect the self-checkout system in order to keep customers happy, push down wait times and eliminate theft.
In 2022, Wegmans scrapped its self-checkout Scan app, which had allowed customers to scan items on their smartphones and put them into their carts or bags while moving through the store, because it was losing too much money to shoplifters who took advantage of the service.
But in February, Wegmans began piloting new smart shopping cart technology from Shopic, which has technology to detect when unscanned items are placed in a shopping cart.
Some retailers will charge fees to return items bought online. When e-commerce was first taking off, many consumers hesitated at the idea of buying something without first touching and feeling it or trying it on.
To make them feel more comfortable, retailers pushed free returns, which would allow customers to bring products home, try them out and ship them back on the retailer’s dime if they weren’t happy. Chief among them was Amazon, which didn’t care if it lost money on shipping, as long as it was converting new shoppers.
Now, that free ride is coming to an end for some retailers. Not only have many stopped covering the cost of shipping items back, some are now beginning to charge a fee for processing returns.
Abercrombie, J.Crew, H&M and Macy’s have all added shipping fees for mail-in returns. And the vast majority of merchants charge a fee for at least some methods of returns, according to logistics company Happy Returns.
“With the ever-increasing costs of running an e-commerce business, many merchants wonder whether it’s finally time to start charging for returns,” wrote Alyssa Baroody, Happy Returns’ manager of customer success, on the company’s blog. “Even retailers that for years have offered free returns to shoppers are exploring the possibility of introducing a processing fee – although not without legitimate concerns and some consumer resistance.”
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