Target Store Remodeling Plan Adds Space, Pickup Features, Food

With its customers increasingly shopping online and demanding same-day services, Target has decided it’s time to grow.

The retailer’s remodeling plans will focus on larger format stores that will include new design elements. At almost 150,000 square feet, these stores are 20,000 square feet larger than the company average, according to a Thursday (Nov. 10) news release.

“While the retailer will continue to open stores of all sizes, it will focus on this larger footprint in the next few years,” the release stated. “Target also will bring its reimagined store design — which features a more open layout and localized elements to inspire and serve its guests — to future remodels as well as new stores across its chain.”

The new store layout will give the retailer backroom fulfillment space that’s five times bigger than past stores of comparable size, according to the release. This new space will help support a business that now sees its stores fulfill more than 95% of the chain’s digital orders. Same-day services, meanwhile, account for more than 10% of Target’s sales.

Earlier this year, Target announced plans to double its investment in the small, local “sortation centers” it has been adding to support rapid order fulfillment by nearby stores and ease its last-mile logistical challenges.

CEO Brian Cornell said in August that this investment came in response to changing consumer habits and increased traffic to its stores and website, which he said have brought the company 90 million new customers in the past three years.

Target’s increased sortation center investment is consistent with PYMNTS research that showed 34% of connected consumers now demand same-day pickup and delivery, while 9% of consumers reported using buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) every day.

Meanwhile, Target said in the release its larger stores will include expanded food and beverage services and “exclusive brand partnerships.”

Last month, the company said it would more than double the number of shop-in-shop offerings from its partnership with Apple, from 17 to 36 locations, including new stores in Texas, Florida and Minnesota in advance of the holiday season.

The retailer also has more than 100 Ulta Beauty shop-in-shops locations around the country. That partnership began over the summer and will eventually see 800 mini Ulta shops operating inside Target stores.

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