🛋️ BRAND HOST WITH THE MOST

Everyone’s looking for a place to just be, and brands have taken notice. In the past few months, we’ve seen Coach open its first restaurant at Jewel Changi Airport, building on an NYC-inspired bar that had previously opened in Singapore. Porsche is also bringing hospitality to Jewel with a lifestyle-led concept store that includes Café Carrera, developed in partnership with Baker & Cook. Meanwhile, Recess and Aesop just unveiled a bathhouse in Montréal—complete with a communal sauna and hydrotherapy.

This isn’t exactly new territory. Ralph Lauren’s Ralph’s Coffee debuted in New York in 2014, and the first international MUJI cafe opened in Singapore in 2015. But the retail-hospitality crossover is accelerating, with brands betting that time spent is worth more than a transaction.

Is this soft-selling with a cocktail menu? Maybe. But the consumer pull is real: many people are looking for offline, collective experiences that give them a reason to meet others (and, ideally, put their phone away). Younger consumers in particular show interest in ‘shared room’ moments—2025 saw a 25% increase in cinema attendance among US Gen Z, while Gen Alpha increasingly say they prefer the big screen to watching at home 🍿.

OUR TAKE

Brands aren’t only competing for consumers’ wallets anymore; they’re competing for consumers’ time. That’s an important distinction; one that explains why the race to build third spaces is heating up. These are environments designed to sit between home and work, places where lingering—and not purchases—is encouraged. The metric that matters isn’t conversion. Instead, brands are measuring dwell time. How long do people stay? Do they come back… and do they bring their friends?

In fact, community is becoming more valuable than conversion. Nearly nine in 10 consumers say being part of a like-minded brand community strengthens their connection more than influencer marketing ever could. The same survey found that almost a third of consumers first discover a brand through community interactions rather than ads or feeds.

We’ve previously discussed how younger consumers in particular are tiring of dopamine-fueled microtrends, algorithmic spectacle, and constant novelty. That same exhaustion is pushing them toward brands that offer something slower: narrative depth and a sense of belonging.

Something else we’re noticing. Third spaces are increasingly being linked to adjacent interests, most notably health and wellbeing. Dior’s growing portfolio of branded spas extends the brand further into daily rituals, while New Balance’s Run Hub—which landed in Malaysia in November—blends retail with a gathering space for runners.

The brands that get this right won’t just earn visits. They’ll become part of how people structure their weeks. But it requires building a space people actually want to return to, not just another backdrop to scrolling.

For those of you born before 1997, ‘fax, no printer‘ is Gen Z speak for ‘undeniable facts I agree with’

Scroll to the end of the newsletter for the correct answer!