Specialty Stores Becoming Highly Specialized

Specialty Stores Becoming Highly Specialized

Perhaps I haven’t been paying attention but sometime over the last, oh I don’t know how many years, local, and some national stores, have become highly specialized. Maybe not so much here in South Florida, but certainly in New York, Washington and other big cities.  Yes, the trend eventually hits Miami and elsewhere.  I am talking about stores that sell things like just cupcakes instead of a general bakery or coffee shop.  I hadn’t paid much attention to this until recently when my wife had 3 or more choices of cupcake stores in Washington from which to send cupcakes to our son for his recent birthday.  Here, in our Ft. Lauderdale suburb, we would have just gone to Publix.

Maybe it is a food trend. We were in New York last year with our daughter lining up at Momofuku Milk Bar for cereal milk ice cream, the ONLY flavor on the menu.  Momofuku only sells this interesting ice cream as well as cookies and other baked goods that center around the cake, cereal and truffle theme.  Not a place to go if you are watching your weight.

Starbucks originally was just a coffee shop. But it has expanded to way beyond coffee.  Today, there are many niche coffee shops which are going back to the coffee roots.  Just coffee.  The list of specialty shops is by no means just food – bags/purses, containers, phones, soap, bath items – to name just a few.  But food is certainly a leader and there are numerous different single item food stores.

But the kicker, to me, in this trend, occurred on May 31 in Chicago when the 1st all-Nutella café opened. This is a stand alone restaurant dedicated to serving Nutella filled crepes, pastries, gelato, pancakes, waffles and other items.  Seriously?  1 or 2 spoonfuls of Nutella is great, but an entire restaurant’s worth is really…. I don’t have the words to finish this thought.