Museum of Ice Cream Scoops Out First US Flagship Store
Museum of Ice Cream is opening a permanent flagship in New York City, a homecoming for a phenomenon that’s arguably setting the standard for pop-up store success in the United States.
The supersized SoHo spot, comprising 25,000 square feet, is set to serve as the Museum of Ice Cream’s first U.S. flagship location. Co-founder Manish Vora said in a statement that the brand, focused on providing an experience for its customers, plans to launch several additional flagships across the country and abroad in the next 18 months.
The concept may sound odd, but the Museum of Ice Cream, part art installation and part retail store, is known for its popularity with Instagram users who have taken thousands of selfies against its brightly colored backgrounds and pools of sprinkles since it launched three years ago as a pop-up in New York. It has defied expectations in selling out tickets while spawning a host of knock-offs such as Candytopia, a similar traveling museum known for its immersive, sugary sweet sculptures.
As U.S. commercial centers contend with a wave of store closings, experiential concepts offer a glimpse of the types of tenants that are replacing longtime retail icons. Their optimized social media engagement and organic advertising help improve foot traffic, which in turn benefits landlords and co-tenants.
After securing $40 million in first-round venture capital financing, Museum of Ice Cream signed a 10-year lease to take the entirety of 588 Broadway, a boutique masonry retail building that was the former home of Swedish fast-fashion chain H&M. Its three-floor exhibit is expected to open this fall, with an exact date yet to be determined.
Following its original New York debut, Museum of Ice Cream took its concept on the road to Miami, Los Angeles and Chicago before opening a 5,000-square-foot permanent location in San Francisco. The exhibits, meant “to unite people through the power of ice cream,” according to Vora, have drawn celebrities including performers Katy Perry, Beyonce and Jay-Z, and social media personality Kim Kardashian.
For its planned New York flagship, Museum of Ice Cream said its architectural and design teams have created some of the brand’s “most imaginative” multisensory installations. These include a three-story slide, a hall of giant ice scoops and an audio-visual experience that will have visitors follow a buzzing sound into a giant beehive. There will also be an on-site cafe and gift shop.
“Over 1.5 million guests have come through our various doors and given us so much input and inspiration," Museum of Ice Cream co-founder Maryellis Bunn said in a statement. "I want to continue to connect people and create moments of joy through ice cream.”
SoHo, long considered one of Manhattan’s top neighborhood destinations for shopping, has had a rough go in the past few years. Of its 5.9 million square feet of retail space, 5.9% stands vacant, a nearly 2% increase over last year. Its vacancy rates have generally trended upward since the fourth quarter of 2016, according to CoStar data.
As shoppers’ changing habits push retailers toward downsized footprints, most landlords of retail space in New York are realigning their expectations of what constitutes a retail tenant and are becoming more open to alternative uses such as food and beverage, and health and wellness, according to Mark Kapnick, executive managing director in New York at brokerage Lee & Associates.
Steve Soutendijk, executive managing director in the retail services group at commercial brokerage Cushman & Wakefield, said, “Any vacancy is a problem, there’s no winner. It’s not good for landlords. There is no incentive for keeping a space vacant, so landlords are being more flexible.”
The Real Estate Board of New York, in its most recent retail report, determined that, “Property owners are facing pressure to reprice existing vacant retail spaces at lower asking rents. As a result, many owners are also offering greater flexibility to prospective tenants in the form of shorter-term deals, concessions and build-outs.”
In SoHo, average estimated asking rents have declined 9% year-over-year, according to CoStar data.
For the Record
Brandon Charnas and Adam Henick of Current Real Estate Advisors represented Museum of Ice Cream in lease negotiations, while the landlord, the Shemul family, handled the deal in-house. Museum of Ice Cream noted it selected Current for its ability to leverage social media data and analytics in finding the ideal retail space.
