About Jeffrey Olson
At the NYU REIT conference in September 2015, Jeffrey Olson, Chairman and CEO of Urban Edge Properties, discussed trends in shopping center retail. He stated that, for the first time, dining out had become more popular than grocery shopping in terms of dollars spent, and said he observed this shift in his company's properties. Olson also noted that restaurants were generating higher sales volume within the same physical space, which he described as beneficial for Urban Edge.
Olson further commented on the impact of technology on retail tenants. He described a visit to a theater company's "war room" where digital technology allowed centralized control of movie broadcasts, and said that technology was making retailers more efficient in many ways. He expressed the view that Urban Edge Properties would be a beneficiary of these efficiency gains over the long term.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Jeffrey Olson's recent appearances.
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Transcript (1 segments)
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Jeffrey Olson0:00
Restaurants are now doing more volume inside of the same space as they were earlier, so that's obviously much better for us. I do think food is just becoming a much more important use within our shopping centers. There was a headline on Bloomberg yesterday that I think for the first time ever, dining out is now more popular than going to the grocery stores in terms of dollars being spent, and I see that in our shopping center. So again, I don't know how many deals you've done with various types of restaurants, Mike, but it seems that that is increasing in frequency. The other thing about technology, and sticking with the theme of what this means to the retailers in terms of making them more productive and more efficient: last week I was with the head of the largest theater company in the Caribbean, and I think he has about 50 theaters, and he showed me their war room, which basically in one small room like you'd see in Wizard of Oz, they control everything because it is now all digitized. So I didn't really have one person controlling the broadcasting of every movie. Technology is making our retailers more efficient in many, many ways, and I think we will be the beneficiary of that over the long run.
