Brands are increasingly transforming their retail locations into genuine Food & Beverage (F&B) venues, whether as permanent experiences or event activations. Is this simply a fad or a carefully orchestrated marketing strategy? What are the stakes? What are the levers of success? And above all: can any brand embark on this bold transformation?
Prepare to dive in: discover our selection of the most successful F&B spaces and our analysis to assess together the value of such an approach.
The F&B space is becoming more common, but its origin is not new. As always, luxury brands paved the way with elegance and a forward-looking vision.
Hermès, as early as 2010, was among the first to offer a discreet and refined experience, extending the high-end customer experience while reinforcing the idea of a “house” and personalised service. But the most emblematic icon remains certainly Tiffany & Co.. Capitalising on a cultural imagery that had existed for decades — the mythic Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Blake Edwards — the jeweller concretised this strong and unique cultural reference in a physical place as early as 2017. A gift to its clientele, which the clientele rewarded well, by creating a phenomenal buzz and transforming the café into a destination in its own right.
Another pioneer, for different reasons, is Polo Ralph Lauren, which as early as 1999 opened restaurants and bars with coherence and a deep integration of F&B into a broad lifestyle-brand ecosystem, where every detail is an extension of the Ralph Lauren aesthetic.
Tiffany capitalized on a cultural imagery that had existed for decades; Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Blake Edwards is one of those legendary films that helped shape the myth of New York. The innovation here was not so much the idea of having a café inside a store — something others were already doing — but rather in bringing a strong and unique cultural reference linked to the brand to life in a physical space. This created phenomenal buzz and turned the café into a destination in its own right.
It was pioneering in the way it transformed brand storytelling into a tangible, ultra-desirable F&B experience.
Embodying a style, claiming a cultural reference, or making one’s values and approach to service tangible are all obvious ways to enhance brand equity.
However, at a time when attention has become a scarce currency, when every brand fights to exist both online and offline, and when societal expectations dictate new rules, the stakes and motivations for taking the plunge are radically different. They require a complete rethinking of traditional approaches in order to stand out and ensure economic viability.
Discover below the four key strategic advantages that make a signature F&B experience an essential asset for your brand’s performance:
In a daily life saturated with messaging, notifications and solicitations of all kinds, brands struggle to capture attention and make their voice heard. Experience becomes the most powerful way to gain visibility and tangibility. And successful retailers know this: F&B imposes itself as a concrete and impactful medium for embodying brand positioning, offering them a tremendous tool to materialise their value proposition and stand out in the ambient cacophony.
Concretely, every element of their F&B space becomes an extension of their positioning. A brand focused on sports performance may offer a menu optimised for recovery and energy, with clean and functional design; something a shoe alone cannot convey. A brand celebrating boldness and creativity will distinguish itself through sculptural culinary creations and unexpected flavours, defying visual and gustatory conventions. Transposing a retail experience into a culinary experience multiplies the points of contact (decoration, dishware, materials, culinary offering…), and consequently the opportunities to tell their story.
This sensory immersion allows brands to test the relevancy and power of their promise in a different context. The refinement of flavours, presentation of dishes, quality of ingredients or originality of culinary concept validate the brand’s DNA and its storytelling ability.
Through this concrete and multi-sensory demonstration, the brand succeeds in materialising its identity and making its message resonate with an unmatched force.
More than a simple value proposition, it creates a lifestyle and a mindset that prove the solidity and relevancy of its positioning. F&B becomes the tangible proof of this intrinsic value, allowing the brand to clearly differentiate itself and assert its leadership in consumers’ minds, far beyond a mere product.
RH Paris, a Parisian furniture brand, positions itself as a curator of style, using its dining spaces to embody both the atmosphere and lifestyle that the aesthetics of its collections create once the furniture is placed in a home.
Offering an aesthetic, an ambiance, a dream, and a way of life, RH brings its brand promise to life for its clients, immersing them fully in its world.
The brand designs its retail spaces following the model of galleries, complete with dining areas -restaurants, cafés, and wine bars- as well as a Source Book, a catalogue conceived as an art book.
With Le Jardin RH, located beneath a glass roof inspired by the Grand Palais and overlooking the Louvre, the brand takes the concept even further -extending it to the menu itself and paying tribute to this exceptional location through sculptural dishes such as the signature “The Tower.”
The South Korean eyewear brand Gentle Monster stands out for its boutiques designed as immersive art galleries, where its glasses are displayed like works of art. In line with this bold and radical approach, its parent company IICOMBINED created Nudake, an F&B space offering sculptural, avant-garde pastries that challenge visual and gustatory conventions — a direct reflection of the brand’s experimental creativity and audacity.
Lego House (Billund, Denmark) and several Lego Discovery Centers also feature restaurants and cafés, the most iconic of which is the “Mini Chef” restaurant at Lego House.
The Mini Chef restaurant is a fully immersive and playful F&B experience. Guests build their orders using Lego bricks, which are then sent to the kitchen via a conveyor belt. Meals are served by robots, often in boxes inspired by classic Lego packaging. The décor is entirely Lego-themed, making it a perfect brand extension that celebrates creativity, play, and imagination; even at mealtime.
Facing growing digitisation of commercial and human interactions, and increasing isolation, there is a keen search for “real-life” experiences.
The F&B space is the perfect place where this human joy of living takes shape — becoming a very good lever for retailers to inject an emotional dimension and a deep, memorable connection, thus transcending the merely transactional experience and creating a true rupture with online shopping spaces.
Concretely, F&B activates simultaneously all the senses of the consumer: taste and smell for the dishes, sight for the décor and presentation, touch for textures and materials, hearing for the ambient sound. It is this multi-sensory stimulation that transforms a classic purchasing act into a memorable experience. But beyond that. Eating out is both a moment of sociability and conviviality par excellence. These moments of sharing and exchange, inherently human, bring a dimension of authenticity and warmth to the brand. By associating itself with these moments of shared pleasure, the brand anchors itself in the daily lives of its customers, strengthening their attachment and their perception of it as a positive actor in their social life.
The brand no longer sells just a product; it sells a living space that stimulates the senses and generates pleasure and surprise — a proposition that contrasts strongly with the pursuit of efficiency and speed toward which our modern societies tend. F&B thus becomes a space where one reconnects to the essential, creating a memorable experience, far richer than a simple act of consumption.
The brand offered its customers the chance to relive their childhood for a moment, through a pop-up designed like a home — complete with a kitchen where visitors could take part in preparing the brand’s iconic recipes and taste its products fresh out of the oven, filling the room with their delicious aroma.
In doing so, Bonne Maman perfectly embodies everything that makes it such a beloved brand in everyday life: indulgence, simplicity, and sharing.
Eataly, the Italian marketplace that combines supermarket, dining area, and cooking school, sells authenticity, quality, diversity, and the art of living tied to Italian cuisine.
Food & Beverage lies at the heart of this promise, allowing customers to taste, learn, and purchase the finest Italian products. The design typically blends the feel of a traditional market with modernity, creating a lively and welcoming atmosphere.
To bring its promise to life, Eataly recreates the experience of an Italian open-air market right from the entrance — adorned with wicker baskets and dotted with food stalls interspersed with iconic markers of Italian life and dining moments: the Aperitivo, pasta-making, fresh mozzarella tasting, and pizzas straight from a wood-fired oven — in short, all the ingredients needed to create a warm and convivial ambiance.
The brand started from a paradox: cities were designed to foster connection, yet loneliness increasingly affects younger generations. Heineken responded by investing in the unused rooftops of buildings, transforming them into spaces for music sets, tastings, and design workshops — creating moments of sharing and exchange that are vital for its target audience.
Beyond bringing its “Open Your World” promise to life, the space is also a strong example of how the brand expresses its identity codes: to ensure visibility, it marks each location with a parasol shaped like its iconic red star and a floor painted entirely in green.
The brand also invited guests to dive into a playful, multisensory world — featuring “Lip Play” tables, biscuits shaped like Lip Comfort Oil bottles to decorate, “Sweet Spot” macarons, and matcha ice cream with a signature fragrance. It was an experience of exploration, creativity, and celebration of the indulgent side of beauty.
A relevant and expressive way to embody the tone and style Clarins seeks to infuse into its lipstick range.
In a world where living an experience becomes more desirable than owning an object, consumers appropriate brand universes to feed their self-narration, the raw material they need to stage themselves on social media.
The brand’s F&B space, when conceived as an extension of its positioning, thus becomes a powerful lever to bring new attractiveness to physical retail points and generate unprecedented organic visibility.
Concretely, brands that master the art of F&B elevate their culinary offering and their décor to the rank of cultural content in its own right. They transform food into an object of desire and sharing — a true medium of visual storytelling. This can translate into clever branding of sweet snacks, staging of a service ritual that echoes a brand value, or the integration of messages with a distinctive tone of voice. Their restaurant becomes a gathering place where visitors — in search of unique and “Instagram-able” moments — spontaneously create content (photos, videos, stories).
This approach capitalises on the power of communities and the virality of culinary content to generate authentic buzz and amplified visibility. F&B thus becomes a powerful catalyst of cultural conversation, turning each customer into an ambassador and each dish into a topic of sharing whose echo goes beyond the walls of the point of sale.
With this space at the intersection of a tea salon and a hair salon, Glossier fully embraces the concept while subtly embedding its brand identity codes: soft pastel colors and rounded shapes are applied across every touchpoint — from mirrors to chandeliers to flower arrangements — recreating the brand’s warm and caring posture, a space where customers feel comfortable confiding. The snacks are also carefully designed: healthy indulgences in a street-food format, perfect for a quick lunch debrief with friends. All these elements allow customers to incorporate the brand into their daily lives.
As an art and entertainment company, Omega Mart –Meow Wolf delivers wonder, mystery, and subversion through immersive and narrative experiences. Omega Mart is one of its flagship locations, housing the Datamosh Bar, the perfect extension of its universe.
The F&B space offers an experience that continues to surprise and defy expectations, with drinks featuring unexpected colors and flavors, all within an environment that is itself a work of art.
Beyond hidden details, messages, and interactive elements that guests love to share on social media, the beverages themselves become a topic of cultural conversation: from naming (The Source, Cosmic Cow, Hazard Pay…) to colors and ingredients (edible glitter, blue corn syrup, crystallized flowers, cotton candy clouds…).
The design of the Zara café in Madrid faithfully mirrors the clean, minimalist, and contemporary aesthetic of Zara Home and Zara fashion collections. With this café, Zara extends the “trendy” and “lifestyle” shopping experience while highlighting its design and style expertise.
Everything in this space is photogenic and shareable. To maximize ROI, the brand has subtly branded the elements that digital influencers are most likely to share — from pastries stamped with the logo to the mug, the essential companion for young generations eager to try every new out-of-home experience.
In the age of constant innovation, brands must not only anticipate the desires of tomorrow, but also create value beyond their traditional offering to maintain relevance and leadership.
F&B imposes itself as a powerful lever for the creation of new brand assets and a true incubator of trends. It enriches the brand ecosystem by providing valuable insights into consumer expectations in terms of experience, design and values — key data to remain relevant and innovative.
Concretely, the F&B space becomes a privileged observation ground, generating valuable data from online reactions for “social listening”. Comments and shares on new flavours, innovative décor or unexpected culinary experiences are all weak signals on emerging consumer desires. The brand can thus test in real time concepts, products or atmospheres, turning each tasting into a subject of conversation and each space into a barometer of trends. These experiments allow the generation of new assets (signature recipes, F&B packaging, branded dishware, sound ambiences) that enrich the brand’s heritage and directly feed its innovation and growth strategy.
F&B, through its ability to reveal and create these trends, generates unprecedented value. It allows the brand to position itself as a pioneer, refine its innovation strategy and develop strong intangible capital, beyond mere transactions.
This company, known for selling designer toys and collectibles, has ventured into F&B — unsurprisingly replicating the elements that made it successful across every touchpoint in its dining space.
Furniture, decorative sculptures, wall illustrations, and food presentation — everything is designed to be transformed into toys or figurines, maximizing the element of surprise.
For Pop Mart, this represents a tremendous opportunity to gauge its audience’s interest in potentially purchasing merchandise derived from its core offerings.
Signature drinks such as the Blue Coconut Light Cloud Coffee or the Sea Salt Orange Blossom Latte convey Moschino’s bold energy through taste.
Alongside them, a selection of collectible items extends the collaboration beyond the cup, transforming the simple ritual of coffee into a true style statement.
With “Espresso Your Style”, Lavazza and Moschino deliver far more than a pop-up: it’s a vibrant experience where fashion meets flavor, and every detail celebrates creativity.
An innovative way to explore all of Lavazza’s ingredients, elevating coffee to a lifestyle art form — expressive, inspiring, and decidedly design-oriented.
TeamLab Planets, the immersive digital art museum, extends its futuristic and sensory positioning with its F&B space, Vegan Ramen UZU Tokyo.
This restaurant offers a continuous immersive experience, where guests enjoy their ramen in rooms with walls and tables projecting fluid, ever-changing digital artworks, or even in an artistic moss garden.
The fully vegan menu features dishes like “Vegan Ramen Flower” with colorful vegetables and “Vegan Ice Cream” with innovative flavors.
Through this space, TeamLab shares its artistic and technological DNA with visitors, merging art and technology through the lens of gastronomy, even if just for the duration of a meal.
How to proceed?
Keys to a signature F&B experience that creates value
For achieving these ultimate goals which enhance the brand, certain practices are essential. The F&B space must be conceived as a natural extension of the brand, and not as a mere addition.
- Total coherence with the brand’s DNA: Every aspect of the F&B – décor, menu, service, naming, packaging – must be a natural and faithful extension of the brand identity.
- Immersive and sensory design: Create an environment that stimulates all senses and immerses the customer in the brand’s universe, thinking about the visual, taste, smell and sound.
- Unique and memorable F&B offering: Propose products that are not generic, but are an extension of the brand’s unique value proposition, distinguished by originality, quality, theming or personalisation.
- “Instagrammability”: Design spaces and products that are visually unique and photogenic and that naturally prompt customers to take photos and share them on social networks, generating free visibility.
- Event-isation: Organise special events, workshops, collaborations with chefs or artists to maintain interest and generate regular buzz.
- Theatricalisation and storytelling: Tell a story through F&B, using décor, menu, dish names to create immersive narration.
- Personalised experience: Create a feeling of rarity and privilege by offering a highly personalised and distinctive experience. This may translate into unique interactions, privileged access or tailor-made moments, giving a compelling reason to visit the space and live a unique moment one can’t find elsewhere.
Your brand, our expertise:
an exceptional F&B destination.
F&B is no longer a simple ancillary service, but a powerful strategic lever for any brand wishing to build a connection with its customers, test the solidity of its positioning, differentiate itself, engage its community, gain visibility, and identify growth and innovation opportunities.
Adding an F&B experience to your retail point of sale also means feeding the emotion, the storytelling and the innovation of your brand; it has a unique story to tell, values to share and a community to inspire.
With our expertise in design, branding and creation of F&B spaces, we aspire not just to feed the body, but also the soul of your brand. We support you in designing places that reflect your identity, surprise your customers and become unmissable destinations.