Upscale French fashion brand Sandro has opened its first freestanding Canadian store at Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre, with more Canadian locations planned. The Yorkdale Sandro is in the mall’s new $331 million, 300,000 square foot Nordstrom-anchored expansion wing which opened last month. 

The 2,000 square foot Yorkdale Sandro store features modern, contemporary-priced fashions for men and women. Its interior is modern, bright and simple, and boasts a strategic, high-profile corner location in the mall’s newest expansion wing. Sandro is diagonally across from the world’s first Canada Goose store, and shares corner frontages with Canadian retailers Lululemon and Maison Birks. Nordstrom’s new 199,000 square foot Yorkdale store is also located steps away, with an entrance between Canada Goose and Maison Birks. 

Sandro launched in Paris in 1984, and is known for focusing on “sleek, chic and effortlessly cool womenswear and menswear”. There are over 500 Sandro stores worldwide. Parent company SMCP (which stands for Sandro, Maje, Claudie Perlot) operates 1176 points of sale globally in 35 countries, with about 4,300 staff. 

Sister-label Maje, dedicated to women’s fashions, opened its first Canadian store last month in Yorkdale’s new ‘Nordstrom Wing, two doors from the new Sandro’. Maje, founded in Paris in 1998 and with over 400 locations worldwide, is known for “bohemian-chic, solar, and more feminine womenswear collections”, according to SMCP. 

Sources at Sandro confirm that the brand will continue opening freestanding Canadian locations, with possibly as many as five stores for each of its Sandro and Maje nameplates. Vancouver is a noted target market for the brand as it continues to seek out real estate opportunities nationally. 

Sandro and Maje also operate concessions within several of Hudson’s Bay‘s top-selling stores. Sandro operates women’s concessions at Hudson’s Bay in downtown Vancouver, Montreal and in Toronto at Hudson’s Bay’s Queen Street, Yorkdale and CF Sherway Gardens locations. Sandro Men’s concessions are contained within Hudson’s Bay’s downtown Vancouver and Toronto Queen Street stores. Maje womenswear concessions are located within Hudson’s Bay’s downtown Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto Queen Street and Yorkdale stores. 

Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre is Canada’s top-performing mall in terms of sales per square foot. New details will be revealed in an upcoming Retail Council of Canada study, which will rank malls on metrics including productivity, size, and pedestrian counts. 

Pusateri’s Fine Foods has opened its second ‘Saks Food Hall’, on the concourse level of Saks Fifth Avenue’s Canadian flagship in downtown Toronto. The new grocery store, strategically located along the city’s busy PATH system, has seen considerable and consistent crowds since its opening on Thursday morning. 

The 24,000 square foot GH+A designed space follows the March opening of an 18,500 square foot Pusateri’s Saks Food Hall as CF Sherway Gardens in Toronto’s West End. The new downtown store sees a different type of shopper — while the Sherway store is in a suburban mall surrounded by parking, the new CF Toronto Eaton Centre Saks Food Hall is geared towards commuters, tourists and locals, with plenty of prepared meals to complement staple grocery items. 

Toronto’s underground pedestrian PATH system links downtown office towers with hotels and retail, and is considered to be the world’s longest underground shopping network. It boasts over 30 kilometres of connected walkways and over 4-million square feet of retail space, rivalling West Edmonton Mall in size. The PATH network is also extremely busy on weekdays with over 200,000 people passing through its halls and its estimated 1,200 stores. 

The new Saks Food Hall opens directly onto the busy PATH under CF Toronto Eaton Centre’s Hudson’s Bay building, featuring access points from the TTC Queen subway station, CF Toronto Eaton Centre, as well as adjacent buildings and parking structures. Over 50,000 people pass by the new store daily, resulting in a busy, yet luxurious shopping experience. 

Breakfast, lunch and dinner are all part of the experience. The store features morning coffee and pastries at its PATH-facing corner space, with healthy lunch-on-the-go as well as prepared meals for restaurant-quality dinners. It also features a variety of grocery items, from milk to bread to meats and cheeses. The entire experience is unlike a typical grocery store though — marble flooring, rich wood and luxurious fixtures abound, with upscale products carried in a wide variety of price ranges. 

Saks Food Hall joins the multi-level 11,000 square foot Oliver & Bonacini-operated restaurant Leña, which opened at Saks in August of this year. Both food experiences are expected to further drive pedestrian traffic into the adjacent Saks Fifth Avenue and Hudson’s Bay stores. Given that people generally consume food more frequently than fashion, adding food and beverage is a strategic move for retailers looking to gain pedestrian footfall and, hopefully, increased sales. 

The store features a number of departments and features, to be described below along with store photos. 

Champagne Bar: The new bar features best-in-class Champagne, fine wine and local beer assortments, all paired with a fresh raw bar and a market menu curated by Pusateri’s corporate chef, Tony Cammalleri. The Champagne Bar has its own corner space in the store, also accessed from the PATH entrance leading into the 2 Queen Street East office tower. 

Sushi Bar: The store’s sushi bar features take-away or eat-in options, with made-to-order cuts of fresh fish, vegetables and toppings, hand-rolled by expert sushi chefs.

The Chopped Bar: The a-la-carte salad bar includes fresh greens, gourmet cheese and meats, as well as dressings. In the morning there’s a make-your-own yogurt parfait counter, where artisanal granolas can be paired with local yogurts and fruit.

Rosticceria: Traditional rotisserie dishes are given a “luxe flair”, according to Pusateri’s, with carved meats and a rotating menu of gourmet street foods and sides. 

BENE, A Pusateri’s Pizzeria: Roman-style pizza served al taglio (by the slice) featuring crust made with Le 5 Stagioni flour that comes from a 150 year old Italian mill, sauces made from certified DOP San Marzano Tomatoes, and Canadian Fior Di Latte cheese. The new BENE faces directly onto the busy PATH, with crowds stopping to examine and purchase the delicious smelling pizza. 

Sorelle and Co.: The shop-in-store is a second for the company (following a location in Vaughn), featuring gluten-free, soy-free, sesame-free, vegan, nut-free, and preservative-free food items ranging from breads to sweets. 

Pusateri’s Café: Facing onto the busy PATH, the new coffee counter also includes fresh breakfast pastry —  a European start to the day, according to the retailer. 

Daits: The fresh counter serves Saudi Arabian dates, in an environment not unlike how one might purchase chocolates. Facing directly onto the PATH, Daits appeared to be constantly ringing up sales during the multiple times that we passed by the space. 

Below are more photos of the beautiful store, which is worth checking out if you find yourself hungry while in downtown Toronto. 

Ivanhoé Cambridge’s Tsawwassen Mills hybrid outlet centre opened about a month ago, and we profiled the property in an article on Retail Insider. Last week, photographer Klaus Johansson toured Tsawwassen Mills, and gave us permission to post his beautiful photos of the South Delta retail centre. 

The 1.2 million square foot hybrid outlet centre features 16 anchors and 180 retailers, 50% of which are ‘pure outlet’ stores. The remaining retailers are considered ‘full-price’. 

Construction began on the massive Tsawwassen Mills in January of 2014, which is located at Highway 17 and 52nd Street in South Delta — about 30 minutes north of the Washington State border and less than 5 km from the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal. 

180 retailers have opened in the centre, including 18 that are first-to-market such as: Bass Pro Shops, DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse, Pro Hockey Life, Saks OFF 5TH, The Outlet by Harry Rosen, Michael Kors Outlet, lululemon athletica outlet, and Browns Outlet (shoes), as well as several others. Thirteen of the mall’s 16 anchors are now open. 

Tsawwassen Mills features a 1,100-seat food hall, four full-service restaurants, a children’s play area, a sports dome and six public entrances each featuring its own special design features. Several stores offer unique entertainment options, including a skate park in the West 49 retail space, and a themed bowling alley inside of Bass Pro Shops. 

According to Ivanhoé Cambridge, more than $600 million went into building Tsawwassen Mills, which now employs about 3,500 full-time and part-time staff. The centre features a 6,000 stall parking lot with 14 electric vehicle charging stations. Other sustainable features include a LEED® certification as mentioned above, based partly on 20% of construction materials being recycled, as well as the planting of 2,000 trees on the property. 

See below for more photos of the centre, all by Mr. Johansson. 

That concludes the photo tour of Tsawwassen Mills by Klauss Johansson.