Barneys
Authentic Brands, the new owner of Barneys, has plans to close all the retailer's stores but keep its signature Freds in-house restaurant alive. The Freds restaurant in the Madison Avenue flagship, in New York City, will stay open through February as part of a larger, experiential event venue. Authentic Brands even plans to license out the Freds name to luxury developments abroad. Freds has been a Barneys signature since 1996. Eater
Birchbox
Birchbox will expand its brick-and-mortar partnership with Walgreens for the holiday season from 11 permanent locations to 500 pop-ups, according to a company press release emailed to Retail Dive. The Birchbox shop-in-shops will operate inside Walgreens stores through the end of December. Retail Dive
Century 21
The discount department-store chain will open a holiday pop-up shop in a former Forever 21 store across from the Macy’s Herald Square flagship. FashionUnited
DressBarn
The Mahwah, N.J.–based chain will close all 544 of its stores by Dec. 26. The owner of DressBarn’s intellectual assets has plans to launch an e-commerce platform for the brand in January. NJ Advance Media
Kroger
The supermarket chain said investments in store modernization and delivery capabilities will enable growth of its same-store sales by at least 2.25 percent in 2020, higher than Wall Street analysts had expected. Reuters
Olympia Sports
Sporting-goods retailer JackRabbit purchased 75 Olympia Sports stores and will continue to operate them under that banner. The Maine-based sporting-goods chain will shut the stores it was unable to sell. Those are located in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia. The Epoch Times
Potbelly Sandwich Shop
Same-store sales declined by 3 percent at the Chicago chain’s 427 company-owned and 45 franchisee-owned units for the quarter ended Sept. 29. Potbelly Sandwich cut the number of its planned company-owned store openings for the year, from an initially announced four or five down to just two or three. The company has closed nearly a dozen stores so far this year. Restaurant Business Online
Riley Rose
Forever 21’s beauty-focused banner will close its 100 brick-and-mortar stores and its website as part of the larger company’s bankruptcy filing. The retailer said it plans to add Riley Rose beauty departments to some of its remaining Forever 21 stores. Allure
Save-A-Lot
The supermarket chain will allow customers to pick up, return and pay for Amazon.com purchases at 400 of its 1,200 stores by the end of 2020. Save-A-Lot will also offer Amazon lockers, at which customers may retrieve or return orders. St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Toys R Us
Toys R Us, which closed all its stores a year ago, is resurfacing with some smaller, interactive shops. The first two of these will open by Black Friday at The Galleria, in Houston; and at Westfield Garden State Plaza, in Paramus, N.J. Yahoo Finance
By Brannon Boswell
Executive Editor, Commerce + Communities Today
