My favorite Store in Des Moines, Iowa, is the West End Architectural Salvage Company and Coffee Shop. You can buy a 100-year old door and/or a latte.

When my wife and I went shopping there, I didn’t know that having a beer as we walked around is part of new nationwide marketing trend.  It is really part of the experiential world we live in. The trend is really a mash-up of different experiences in one location, making for something new and refreshing.

You are finding restaurants in grocery stores, coffee shops in libraries, restaurants in movie theaters and soon you may find a Wine bar next to the dressing room at your favorite clothing shop. One C-store, that should be touting gas, is now hyping pizza because of the coming electric car trend.

The multi-experience effort is really about trying to appeal to millennials and technology disruption in our categories. For retailers, sagging same-store sales have jump-started the transformation. Competing with online outlets means adding more and more value to the physical shopping experience.

So what can we all add to our marketing experiences to add value to our customers, patients (and families), contributors and prospective students? That is the question. Would you like a glass of wine with that?  Cheers.