T&T Supermarket is opening in a San Jose mall on June 18. It is bringing a bakery, a hot-food counter, beauty, pickup, next-day delivery and a full Asian grocery line to Westgate Center, a property that did not have an anchor worth the drive before.
Alshaya Group signed more than twenty stores at Aventura Mall in Kuwait in May: Starbucks, H&M, Foot Locker, Raising Cane's, Chipotle, Victoria's Secret, Primark, Ulta Beauty. One agreement. One counterparty. One signing date.
Oakridge Park opens in Vancouver on May 28 with Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Chanel, Prada and lululemon on the ground floor and 6,000 residents in apartments above them.
Three anchors. Three geographies. The same question underneath.
New on malls.com: Why physical stores still matter in e-commerce - BOPIS, store fulfillment, and how brands return to retail in 2026. Plus: The 2026 mall tenant format taxonomy - nine retail formats with definitions and named examples.
The supermarket is becoming the anchor.
T&T is not a standard grocery play. The format includes a bakery, a hot-food section, a prepared-meal counter, private-label, beauty, same-day pickup, and next-day delivery all inside one mall building. It is a reason to come back on Monday, Thursday and Saturday. Not a reason to visit once.
The second US location is San Jose, after Bellevue, Washington. San Francisco City Center and Millbrae Friendship Plaza follow by December 2026. T&T is not expanding randomly. It is reading the Pacific-corridor population that existing US grocery formats were not calibrated for.
Wegmans shows the same logic at the premium end. The 110,000 square foot Charlotte Ballantyne store opens October 14, with an outdoor seating area, a children's playfield, a café and 450 jobs attached to one address. Wegmans is not selling groceries. It is selling the trip.
Both formats are doing what the department store used to do: setting the floor for visit frequency across the entire center. Neither relies on size to do it.
One agreement. Twenty brands. One franchisee.
The Aventura Mall agreement covers more than 10,000 square meters across more than twenty storefronts. Mabanee Company signed with Alshaya Group as a single counterparty. What the developer purchased was not a list of tenants. It was a daily schedule.
Morning: Starbucks. Lunch: Raising Cane's, Shake Shack, Chipotle. Afternoon: H&M, American Eagle, Bath & Body Works. Evening: Victoria's Secret, Ulta Beauty, Primark. One agreement covers the full trading day.
The same pattern ran in Dubai starting March 26. Alshaya Group opened Primark's third UAE store at Mall of the Emirates on May 21, completing a three-property Dubai rollout in eight weeks. Bahrain and Qatar follow before the end of 2026. In each market, Primark entered as Alshaya's tenant, not as its own operator.
In the Western model, a developer assembles tenants one lease at a time. In the GCC, a developer signs the right franchisee and the franchisee delivers the tenant mix, the supply chain and the visit schedule. The anchor question starts one conversation earlier.
Oakridge built 6,000 residents above the retail floor.
Oakridge Park's opening tenant list covers Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Chanel, Prada, Ferragamo, Canada Goose, Rolex, Tiffany & Co., lululemon, Aritzia and Time Out Market Vancouver at 51,000 square feet. The development by QuadReal Property Group and Westbank will reach five million square feet at a cost of $6.5 billion by 2029.
The 6,000 residents moving into apartments above the retail floor are not a bonus feature. They are the anchor. A resident who walks from her apartment elevator to a Louis Vuitton and a food hall does not need a reason to visit the mall. She lives inside the visit frequency.
Oakridge does not wait for traffic. It builds it into the structure.
What we're watching
→ Shoptalk Europe, Barcelona, June 9-11. 180 speakers, 68 percent at C-suite level. Zalando, Arc'teryx, Christian Louboutin, Sephora, H&M Group, HOKA, Harrods, John Lewis. Malls.com covering as press. Watching physical expansion announcements and how the European retail AI deployment gap versus US is framed on the mainstage.
→ Ariat International, Mall of America. 10,500 square feet, opening 2026. Global flagship for a Western workwear brand inside a 1992 super-regional mall in Bloomington, Minnesota. Watching confirmed launch date and first look at the format.
→ LoveShackFancy at Woodbury Common Premium Outlets. First outlet location for the DTC contemporary brand. Watching whether the pattern holds: full-price physical first, outlet channel second. SKIMS, Reformation and Monos opened full-price stores in 2025. Outlet entries would be the next signal.
→ Marwa, O'Parinor, Klépierre, Aulnay-sous-Bois. Third French store for a Moroccan contemporary brand, inside a Klépierre tier-two center north of Paris. Watching whether additional MENA-to-European entries accumulate before the end of 2026. If it repeats, MENA-to-Europe becomes a store-location signal, not a one-brand exception.
The department store filled the center with space.
T&T fills it with reasons to come back three times a week. Alshaya fills it with the whole trading day. Oakridge filled it with 6,000 people who live upstairs.
The next lease is not written around square footage.
It is written around how many times a week the same person comes back.
Mati
Editor, Malls Money
Malls.com covers retail expansion across 50+ countries. We will be at Shoptalk Europe, June 9-11, Fira Gran Via, Barcelona.
Browse all issues → signals.malls.com.
Download the report → Brand Expansion Signals 2026.