Since the 1950s, department chains like Sears and J.C. Penney have anchored suburban shopping malls. But hundreds of stores are expected to soon close their doors. Sears, an iconic mall mainstay, plans to shutter more than 300 locations in the US by the end of this year, and J.C. Penney recently said it would close 138 stores because of waning traffic and sales.
But now a different type of company is moving into their vacated spaces: grocery stores.
"Food retail is one thing helping struggling malls survive," June Williamson, an architecture professor at the City College of New York who cowrote "Retrofitting Suburbia," told Business Insider.
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