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“There has to be something innovative that is happening in the shopping centre industry to attract the customers away from their screens and into the malls,” Debbie Kalisky, associate in retail development at Montreal-based retail design firm GH&A, said at the ICSC conference. “It’s about offering them something unique and innovative, a place where they can socialize and have experiences with people in the same community, which is something that you can’t do when you are shopping online.”

Food and beverage is a “core component” of the reinvention of the mall, she said. “The shopping centre is now a place to wine and dine, and it’s a place where we never had full-service restaurants before and where we now have full-service restaurants.”

Food and entertainment now account for 22.1 per cent of the space leased in U.S. malls, compared with 19.2 per cent in 2012, according to recent data from CoStar Group Inc. and cited in the Wall Street Journal.

“It’s really a paradigm shift from what was a commodity-based retail world to a more experiential one,” Kalisky said.

Retailers whose categories are vulnerable to commodification by the Internet — such as footwear and books — have also made big efforts in recent years to engage their customers.

For example, Indigo Books & Music Inc. has been opening up American Girl doll boutiques in its stores across Canada that host doll dress-up events and storytelling parties.

“What we find with millennials is they are not as connected to things as we are — they are connected to experiences,” said Fab Stanghieri, senior vice-president of real estate and construction at Cineplex Digital Media. “Even when we design spaces for people to interact in groups, there has to be seating for six, eight, 10 people to share the experience.”