On the ground floor of Printemps New York, beneath towering light fixtures shaped like Seussian lily pads, shoppers can try on glossy Roger Vivier Mary Janes while sipping Champagne that flows from a roving cart. The French luxury department store, which is spread across two levels inside a landmark Art Deco building in lower Manhattan, is part of a new generation of food-meets-fashion collaborations transforming luxury retail into full-fledged hospitality experiences. And it’s perhaps the most ambitious of these ventures yet.
Up until now, typical American department stores followed a different playbook: Open a standard café serving niçoise salads and other lunchtime staples to peckish shoppers in search of convenience. For its first US flagship, the 160-year-old French retailer tapped Gregory Gourdet to oversee all five culinary programs. The Portland, Oregon–based James Beard Award winner, known for his diasporic cooking and impeccable fashion-forward sensibility, seemed like a perfect fit.
“They wanted to think outside the box,” the chef says. That they have: Mere feet from the Mary Janes, the Red Room Bar offers cocktails and small bites. The pastry counter at all-day Café Jalu stocks Haitian chocolate brownies and a range of viennoiseries. At fine dining restaurant Maison Passerelle, one can break for cane-syrup-glazed duck and diri ak sos pwa (Haitian-style rice and beans), accompanied by vintage Christofle silverware handpicked by Gourdet in France. Up the escalator and past women’s ready-to-wear, chic raw bar Salon Vert serves a six-course midday meal tailored to the power lunch crowd. And if those roving Champagne carts prove elusive, guests can pop by the petit Champagne Bar tucked beside the beauty department and order a glass on the spot.
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At Printemps, the fare is as much a part of the destination as the shopping, luring people off of their phones and into the brick-and-mortar spaces, encouraging exploration and the chance to linger. “We want more of a hospitality feel to the whole thing,” Gourdet says. It’s an intentional cohesion, where dining and shopping are stitched together in one polished sensory experience.
Dining inside a department store isn’t new. Barney’s had Fred’s, Bergdorf Goodman has BG, Ralph Lauren unveiled RL Restaurant in 1999, with dozens of branded coffee shops to follow around the world. But this latest wave of high-fashion dining, with Gourdet and a new guard of culinary voices, suggests a palpable cultural shift. Dior tapped Dominique Crenn for its Café Dior in Dallas and Monsieur Dior restaurant in Beverly Hills, Tiffany & Co.’s Blue Box Café in New York is run by Daniel Boulud, and Gucci Osteria, guided by Massimo Bottura’s team, is also in Beverly Hills (where it earned a Michelin star), as well as Seoul, Tokyo, and Florence. So why are fashion’s biggest names now going all in on hospitality?
“Post-pandemic, maisons [or luxury fashion houses] are reinventing flagships from static product showcases into dynamic experience hubs,” says Claudia D’Arpizio, senior partner and global head of fashion and luxury at Bain & Company. “Food and beverage serve as magnets for traffic, dwell time, and repeat visits.”
That strategy reflects a broader redefinition of luxury itself. For much of the modern era, wealth bought prestige. Status could be acquired, worn, and displayed in the form of, say, a designer bag or rare watch. But according to Bain’s research, “experiential luxury” now accounts for nearly 60% of global luxury spending. Affluence is expressed not only through objects, but also through access. Dining, travel, and wellness have all become potent status symbols, and luxury retailers are embracing this new era.
“Today, a growing share of the world’s top 50 luxury brands operate at least one branded or codeveloped F&B concept,” D’Arpizio says. The projects range from cafés and bistros to fine dining restaurants and chef collaborations, and mark “a sharp rise from only a handful of examples five years ago,” D’Arpizio continues. “What began as decorative or marketing-driven pop-ups has evolved into a strategic pillar of brand experience and customer engagement.”
Economics may be a motivating factor. After a decade of rapid growth, global luxury sales have flattened while experience-based spending continues to climb. In plain terms, that means choosing to buy memories over things—flying somewhere to see a blockbuster museum exhibition or a Taylor Swift concert, or rolling cavatelli in a hands-on pasta class with a local chef. Or, for the style set, maybe it’s biting into a Tiffany blue petit four during afternoon tea at the luxury jewelry brand’s Blue Box Café.
The average shopper, says Gourdet, might buy a luxury item once a year, “but we go to dinner far more often.” And while a meal may not cost the same as a Dior grained calfskin Saddle bag, it can build loyalty, fostering an emotional connection that lasts long after dessert.
Of course, today’s diners aren’t just eating, they’re broadcasting. On Instagram and TikTok, posting a glittering J’Adior martini at Café Dior or a caviar-topped waffle at Le Café Louis Vuitton signals access and taste while giving the brand priceless visibility. And the trend is only growing as diners seek real-life moments that translate seamlessly to social media feeds. Luxury brands have noticed, says D’Arpizio, and now they design their restaurants to fuel that visibility. At Printemps, for example, designer Laura Gonzalez’s delightfully modern, maximalism—layers of patterned marble, vivid frescoes, and those statement lily pad light fixtures—are part of the overall allure, creating spaces made to be photographed, shared, and reposted. In turn, every guest becomes both customer and ambassador.
Beyond the photogenic dishes and decor, the most compelling partnerships in this new wave merge two creative worlds: the fashion house and the chef. At Monsieur Dior in Beverly Hills, Dominique Crenn translates the maison’s visual language into flavor—her precise, poetic culinary approach mirroring Dior’s structured elegance. “Both cuisine and couture evoke emotion and tell a story,” she says. That sensibility shows up in the tuna tartare, layered with purple yam chips and crème fraîche, designed to capture the lightness and drama of an aubergine-hued Dior gown worn by actress Emilia Clarke at Cannes. The restaurant itself extends the brand’s storytelling from atelier to table. As D’Arpizio notes, this is dining as participation—a way for guests to step inside a brand’s identity through another artist’s medium.
The model for these collaborations is still evolving. When Le Café Louis Vuitton opened in November 2024 on the fourth floor of the New York flagship store, the initial goal was to create a destination that felt both luxurious and approachable while highlighting the fashion house’s widely known iconography. Restaurateur Stephen Starr worked alongside Vuitton’s Paris-based culinary directors Arnaud Donckele and Maxime Frédéric to develop a menu that balanced decadent flourishes and comfort: buttery lobster rolls, mushroom ravioli shaped like the LV monogram flower, and a rich chocolate entremets bearing the brand’s insignia. “Both of our brands have a passion for craftsmanship, precision, and creating the best experience,” Starr says. Louis Vuitton’s presence is not only prominently displayed on the linens and dishware but also in the food itself—the act of dining yet another form of immersive branding.
These collaborations have laid the groundwork for what comes next: a shift from one-off restaurants to comprehensive luxury hospitality ecosystems. “Luxury F&B will see maisons extending into members-only clubs and private lounges, deepening community and exclusivity among top clients,” D’Arpizio predicts. Bar and nightlife programs, traveling chef residencies, and wellness-driven cafés, she adds, will also keep the most loyal clients close.
That expansion is already underway. In 2026, Louis Vuitton is slated to open its first hotel, on Paris’s Champs-Élysées, and while it’s under construction, the entire Instagrammable façade is wrapped to resemble one of its iconic leather trunks. It's a natural extension of the brand’s hospitality-driven Culinary Community, a network overseen by chefs Donckele and Frédéric that now includes restaurants from Saint-Tropez to Seoul.
For customers, these spaces deliver something luxury retail alone may not: the enticement to return. Very few consumers buy a $5,000 coat every month, but they might meet friends weekly at Café Dior for cappuccinos emblazoned with the house’s signature bee, or drop into Salon Vert at Printemps for martinis and oysters at happy hour. In other words, for those who can afford the day or night out, these new culinary ventures offer the prospect of attainability—without a four-figure price tag.
As Gourdet says, whether you’re dining on citrus-cured kampachi at Maison Passerelle or snacking on a slice of gluten-free spiced banana bread at Café Jalu, “There’s something for everyone.”