Renowned Chicago chef Charlie Trotter loves to create complex and unexpected taste combinations with the best ingredients he can find. Organic veggies and sushi-grade seafood are de rigeuer at his eponymous restaurant, as are fine wines and artisanal breads.
Body Shop International, the skin- and body-care retailer, loves to use high-quality natural ingredients in its products, too. So on Tuesday, Trotter and Body Shop got together to celebrate a new store design and the launch of two lines: cranberry bath products made from real cranberries and moisturizing body butters made from soy and brazil nuts.
Trotter’s contribution–a lunch-time appearance at the remodeled Body Shop in the Chicago Place mall, 700 N. Michigan Ave., and some tasty treats he dreamed up using cranberries and soy nuts.
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It’s the first commercial collaboration between Trotter and a retail chain. The busy chef says his interest was piqued when the Body Shop called with its offer.
“These people want to celebrate the refinement of body and soul,” he told us. “For us, the food component fits right in. It’s about `people who get it.'”
The partnership isn’t as big a reach as it seems, he says. His wife is a “major client” of Body Shop’s environmentally friendly products, and Trotter is always looking for ways to make his food a soul- and body-enriching experience.
The Body Shop is using Trotter and four other chefs around the country to draw attention to its new store design, which is 30 to 50 percent larger than its old prototype.
The store is bigger to allow mothers to wheel strollers around more easily, says Chad Little, Body Shop spokesman. It also holds more, which is handy because almost a third of the chain’s products are new this year. And the new prototype continues to highlight Body Shop’s commitment to the environment with laminated bamboo-grass flooring, recycled wood shelves and hemp fabrics hanging behind product displays.
That newness should help drive Body Shop’s U.S. sales, which have been on an upswing for the past two years despite intense competition from a range of competitors including Limited Inc.’s Bath & Body Works. Surprisingly, after more than a decade of losses, the U.S. has become profitable and is now the leading market for U.K.-based Body Shop International.
Credit Adrian Bellamy, who spent two years streamlining the U.S. business, as well as a better corporate understanding of what Americans want from their body products. In the early days, Body Shop offered lots of bath-related stuff, which is popular with the British, who have more tubs than showers.
But Americans are shower-loving creatures, so Body Shop eventually responded with shower gels and scrubs. Now, products for the U.S. are created and developed by an American team.
Like many retailers, Body Shop is still recovering from the Sept. 11 attacks. It lost an entire store in the World Trade Center collapse, although all of the staff escaped unhurt. And sales at stores in airports and tourist-dependent areas such as Orlando still have not returned to normal.
But the chain is unbowed. The staff from its destroyed store has agreed to move as a group to a new store that will open at Madison Avenue and 85th Street on Friday.
So long: J.C. Penney Co. will close its under-performing store in Lincolnwood Town Center on Friday.
The closing is part of a 47-store downsizing announced by the company last January, said Penneys spokesman Tim Lyons.
Hanging in there: The overall vacancy rate in Chicago-area shopping centers declined slightly during the third quarter, to 9.3 percent from 9.4 percent in the second quarter, according to a survey by real estate firm CB Richard Ellis.
But don’t expect that stability to last. The vacancy rate likely will climb to more than 10 percent by year-end as stores are forced out of business by a slowdown in consumer spending after Sept. 11, predicts Todd Caruso, a managing director with the firm.
The fourth-quarter rate will be boosted because of preattack events, too. HomeLife Furniture stores are vacating their premises after completing liquidation sales.
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