Upscale NYC Fashion Retailers Like Louis Vuitton Selling Food & Beverages

By: Benyamin Davidsons

Midtown Manhattan’s world-famous shopping corridor is getting more sweets for the palate.

As reported by Crain’s NY, high-end fashion retailers in prime Fifth Avenue shops are expanding their lines— to sell chocolates and coffee. Fashion icon Louis Vuitton, in its posh store on 57th street, has opened a Le Café Louis Vuitton on the fourth floor.

While monogrammed canvas trunks at the French fashion store sell for $46,500, customers with the will but not so much the budget, can now purchase something with an authentic logo. The brand is selling a chocolate shortbread version of the trunk, called Logomania, for $85. First debuted in November, this is Louis Vuitton’s first branded cafe in the United States. The chocolate shop, Le Chocolat Maxime Frédéric, is run in-house. The cafe, meanwhile, is run by Starr Restaurants. The brand, most famed for its luxury leather accessories, already operates other cafes around the globe, including in Paris, Tokyo and Bangkok.

While the concept of adding a cafe is not altogether new, it is a growing trend. Muji, Arc’teryx, and Tiffany have also jumped on the band wagon. It’s a way to a way to make the brick-and-mortar experience more invigorating, said Shawn Grain Carter, associate professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology. It’s a bid to get shoppers, new and loyalist, to love shopping in store again, by adding an offline experience. “On every single level, they want you to buy their clothes, buy their glassware and enjoy their dessert,” said Carter, who is also a luxury branding and retail industry consultant. “‘Socialize with us, shop with us, dine with us.’ It’s like a seduction, and it’s a smart way and a strategic way to do it.”

The first version of mixing couture with cuisine actually dates back to the 1950’s, said Richard Hodos, vice chairman of JLL’s New York retail services team. As per Crain’s, luxury department store Neiman Marcus was among the first to try the concept, opening its first restaurant, the Zodiac Room, in its Dallas store in 1953. “The idea of mixing food and luxury apparel is not new if you look at Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman,” Hodos said. “The creative merchants going back 150 to 200 years always tried to engage customers in an experience to become more loyal to that brand.”

Legendary actress Audrey Hepburn glamorized the idea of enjoying a morning bite overlooking gold and jewelry in the movie “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”. Only 56 years later, however, did Tiffany’s actually open its first in-store dining— Blue Box Cafe, on the fourth floor of its Fifth Avenue flagship in 2017. Still, it was closed two years later for renovations. Tiffany’s Blue Box Cafe reopened in 2023, on the sixth floor of the landmark store. There was much fanfare, with the eatery quickly garnering a 1,200-name waitlist for reservations. “The restaurant is doing very, very well,” Sebastien Silvestri, CEO of Blue Box Cafe, said some two years after its reopening. “It’s really nonstop.”

Per Crain’s, Louis Vuitton’s Le Chocolat Maxime Frédéric is also a hit. On a random day in February, the wait for a table for two was an hour and a half, as per one of the maître d’s. Muji, a Japanese retail company in Chelsea, is now also selling specialty drinks and Japanese comfort foods.