— By Kristin Hiller — As the nation emerges on the other side of the pandemic, the retail and restaurant industries are tasked with adapting their store designs and business models to match consumer behavioral shifts. Shoppers and diners alike want to make purchases easily with multiple options for ordering and pickup. Border Foods, one of the largest privately held Taco Bell franchisees in America, enlisted the services of Minneapolis-based design consultancy Vertical Works Inc. in 2020 to create a new restaurant design. The result was Defy, a two-story …
— By Greg Houck — How emerging mixed-use trends can translate to long term success. Mixed-use projects have a retail problem. Too often, incorporating retail spaces into a mixed-use project is straightforward and static: a single complimentary demand driver, such as a high-rise multifamily with convenient ground-floor grocer. With this approach, the residential component may subsidize a portion of revenues for the tenant, but most often it isn’t sufficient enough and local demand has not been fully understood. Over the past several years there has been many exciting innovations …