I, for one, enjoy working from home.
Working from home becoming increasingly normal was one of the only good things that came from the pandemic. Unfortunately for some businesses, that came at a huge cost. This month, I am plugging the St. Louis Area Foodbank. To get more information, or to find out how to donate your time/money/food, visit their website: https://stlfoodbank.org/
SOURCES:
https://www.thestreet.com/restaurants/troubling-trend-forces-surprising-restaurant-closures-time-out-market
https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2026/01/21/office-momentum-weber-shandwick-st-louis.html
https://wfhresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/WFHResearch_updates_January2026.pdf
Photo Credits:
Stadium one west building: https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/news/2023/11/30/anthem-to-add-250-workers-downtown-st-louis.html
Timeout Boston: https://www.timeout.com/time-out-market-boston/faqs
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
Every week, Sean shares insights about the world of marketing and speaks to people who are working in various marketing roles – creative agencies, brand managers, MarCom professionals, PR pros, business owners, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers and more!
The goal of The Marketing Gateway is simple – we want to build a connection between all of our marketing mentors in the Midwest and learn from one another! And the best way to learn is to listen.
And the next best way is to share!
For more episodes:
https://www.youtube.com/@TheMarketingGateway
Copyright 2025, The Research & Planning Group, Inc.
TRANSCRIPT:
I’m stuck working remotely today due to illness in my house, but that’s hardly the stigma it used to be. Pretty much through my entire research career, I’ve been apologizing for working from home while many of my other colleagues have been stuck at their offices, mainly because I didn’t want them to think less of me for doing the very rational thing and saving myself the time and trouble of commuting to my office, but over the last six years, attitudes have changed a lot.
In fact, many of my professional colleagues are rarely in their offices anymore, often having at least 2-3 work from home days a week and then showing up at their offices the remaining days. It was once a courtesy to apologize for kids or pets making noise in the background; now it’s just part of the din of the average workday when you’re connecting on Zoom, Teams or Meet.
And we’ve also all gotten used to seeing those fake backgrounds people put up to cover the clutter or the really cultivated backgrounds of sterile bookcases many people have – the ones you see behind me are real, by the way, and only a small sampling of all the books in my house.
I just got a couple more books over the weekend, by the way. I’d say it’s a problem, but these are books we’re talking about, here. You can never have too many of those.
But as great as working from home is for workers – after all, you save a ton of money on gas and nice clothes and vending machine snacks and lunches out, and you even get to spend more time with your pets and kids! – it turns out that work from home has really challenged an ecosystem that was pretty dependent upon people getting up every morning and heading into the office.
Here in St. Louis, it’s resulting in a hollowing out of commercial real estate downtown, restaurants having to change their hours and staffing models and traffic patterns during the day just getting weird and different as people use their breaks to run errands close to home instead of close to work.
There are also a lot more people who’re willing to travel now and work remotely from hotels, resorts or Airbnbs at some desirable destination while they laugh at all their colleagues stuck in the Midwest with all this lousy weather we seem to get, and that’s changing a lot of things too.
And what’s more, it looks like a lot of these changes are here to stay. So how can we, as marketers, understand these changes… and maybe even adjust our strategies to embrace them?
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this is the Marketing Gateway.
Downtown St. Louis has been working hard to revitalize a fairly blighted area along Market Street between the Gateway Arch and Union Station. Over the last few years, a lot of effort has gone into rebuilding the area around the new Energizer Park, where the Major League Soccer team City SC plays, and for tourists, at least, downtown St. Louis does have some nice things to offer.
But when it comes to commercial real estate, there are entire buildings that are completely vacant, including an eight-story office building known as the Stadium One West building on 1831 Chestnut St. It used to be one of the homes to Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, but they relocated to a different building closer to the riverfront and went from a 318,000 square foot office to a 50,000 one.
Most recently, Stadium One West was home to offices for two national advertising agencies – the local office for Momentum Worldwide, which is the third-largest marketing and PR firm in the St. Louis area, and the local office for Weber Shadwick, which is the eighteenth-largest in the area.
And Stadium One West is also the 18th-largest of something – specifically, buildings in the local area, with an enormous 420,000 square feet over eight floors.
To put that in perspective, my own office is about 1100 square feet. That would mean Stadium One West could accommodate between 300-400 small business offices or probably at least 25-50 mid-sized ones. It’s a big building!
But I’ve got no plans to move downtown, nor do a lot of other businesses in the area, because even though it would be more convenient for me as a commuter, downtown’s rapidly turning into a place that’s not so attractive to businesses. A lot of the retail and food service that’s still open in the area is geared at tourists, not residents or workers. St. Louis also isn’t a particularly walkable city if you need to go out for lunch or run some errands – everything’s spread out and you have to drive, which also means you have to bring a bike, pay for parking, use a scooter or pay for a ride somewhere.
And that problem isn’t going to get any better any time soon, because the businesses that we need most downtown are facing the same struggle that everyone’s seeing right now – as more and more people work from home either fully remote or in hybrid situations, businesses that were dependent upon the breakfast and lunch rush in urban areas are really struggling to keep their lights on and their doors open.
Prior to the pandemic, it was pretty common to see coffee shops and cafes on many corners or on the first floor of businesses in most major cities. Now, if you can find one, it may have more limited hours. Restaurants that used to be open for lunch on weekdays now may be closed or have restricted hours on Mondays or even Fridays because those are days that hybrid workers tend not to go into the office. And some places are closing down entirely. In Boston, for example, the Time Out Market Boston in Fenway, which is a 27,000 square foot destination with 15 different restaurants, is closing for good tomorrow, and the chain has already closed other locations such as its spot in Miami.
A study from the firm WFH Research estimates that there are at least a dozen cities where people are spending at least $2,000 less per person in cities largely due to remote work, and in New York City, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., that number more than doubles.
Along with broader consumer cutbacks in spending and more people preparing breakfast and coffee at home, this is having a huge impact on retail and quick-service food locations dependent on heavy daily foot traffic. And some of that money is instead going to places closer to home in residential bedroom communities, where staffing models tend to favor breakfast and dinner rushes instead of lunch.
So, how permanent is this problem? According to the most recent report from WFH Research, pre-Covid, among working adults, fewer than 10% of paid work days in a month were work from home days. During the pandemic, it spiked to over 60%, and now it’s down to 27%, but it’s been around that level since 2023. And close to 40% of workers are either hybrid or fully work from home now.
That means that on average, one to two work days per week are work from home days for every worker, and when you consider that financial, technology and professional workers are more likely to work remotely than those who have jobs that require them to be onsite such as retail, manufacturing, construction, education or hospitality and food services, you have a double-whammy of fewer people available to support ancillary businesses and also lower average spending during work hours.
So, what does this mean for us as marketers? I’m glad you asked.
First of all, we need to acknowledge that now that the pandemic and its aftershocks are over, this is the new world we’re moving into, and since many of those workers who are hybrid or fully remote are in their 30s or 40s, we can expect to see a greater number of workers over time seek these job, probably reaching a point where at least 50% of workers are at least hybrid employees who only come into the office a few days a week.
That means businesses hoping for the return of the good old days need to recognize that those days aren’t coming back. And downtown areas like St. Louis probably need to figure out some ways to rebuild districts that aren’t dependent on weekday business foot traffic. For example, Stadium One West is across the street from Union Station, within a couple of blocks of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department and the soccer stadium, and near several apartment buildings and a language immersion school. It’s also directly next to a strip of park space called Aloe Plaza.
This might be a great place for the city to develop some dedicated space for food vendors to be able to set up stalls selling ready to eat food without having to commit to operating retail space. The city could also eliminate parking spots so that food trucks could park along Chestnut Street and attract tourists, residents and workers during peak hours without having to commit to leases or long-term investment.
The city might also want to consider converting Chestnut Street into a pedestrian-friendly district that can run between 15th and 20th street and offer additional opportunities for retail booths that would be of interest to visitors, residents and workers.
Considering that the stretch I’m talking about is a barely-used one-way street that is bordered by park space on one side and which runs parallel to the path between Energizer Park, Union Station, the Municipal Court building, the Stifel Theatre and Enterprise Center, this would actually make a lot of sense because there is currently not a pedestrian-friendly way to walk between those places.
Gradually expanding this path past 13th street to Tucker and adding a path up to the St. Louis Public Library and the Soldiers Memorial Military Museum might also help entice foot traffic from the 22nd Judicial Circuit Court, City Hall and the St. Louis University School of Law.
But because we St. Louisans often get fed up with waiting for the City of St. Louis to take bold moves like this, let’s think of ways specific marketers could capitalize on this new workforce pattern.
One of the obvious ones to me is for businesses in more residential areas to set up third spaces for remote workers who need to get away from home for meetings or to clear their heads but who don’t want to have to rent office space. Making these first-come, first-served would encourage more foot traffic, though businesses might have to place limits on their use to ensure a small number of everyday customers weren’t using them in place of an actual office. Shutting these spaces down during low-volume hours or requiring a reservation order to utilize them could solve that problem.
For example, consider cafes or lunch spots that have a limited number of booths available with an enclosure around them designed to limit noise and to offer interesting backdrops for Zoom calls. This fairly modest value-added offering could entice remote workers to get out of their homes and have some business-friendly lunches.
Retailers could also capitalize on remote workers who are bored or need a break and offer special promotions on Mondays to Fridays between 11-1 that are designed to boost foot traffic, such as offering special deals during that time or having events within their stores with giveaway or food items. This could even be a way for retailers to partner with local businesses seeking to gain exposure to professional workers and also encourage networking.
Advertising this using social media geofencing and targeting higher-income professionals would help to build foot traffic and word of mouth.
Pop-up shops and restaurants could also capitalize on this trend, particularly if a retail space set up for multiple pop-ups could be designed to attract people who need a break from work. Designing these pop-ups to appeal to people in the 30s and 40s seeking novelty and something interesting to break up their day could help to attract those needing an outing, and pop-ups would be particularly well-suited to being open just Fridays, Mondays and weekends to maximize local traffic.
Pop-ups could also be designed to rotate around different parts of the area to build efficiencies. For example, a set of pop-ups that’s in St. Charles for a few months could move over to Edwardsville or Kirkwood or Wildwood and rotate around the area, ensuring year-round business without each pop-up’s concept getting stale.
The key in all of these plans would be to think about resident hybrid or fully remote workers as added value to existing foot traffic and staffing and positioning services to them specifically. Many of these workers have fairly flexible schedules and can plan their outings around gaps in their meetings or deadlines, and driving 5-10 minutes to a place in their community with free parking and local flavor could be quite attractive, particularly if it felt business-friendly.
As someone who’s been hybrid working for years, I have to say that if local retail and lunch businesses where I live took a stronger interest in me and made it worth my while to get out of my house and check them out, they’d have my attention. After all, one of the worst things about living in the suburbs is that you often have to drive into the city to find anything interesting or unique.
I’m Sean in St. Louis, and this has been The Marketing Gateway. See ya next time!
Plug:
This month I’m plugging the St. Louis Area Foodbank, which is a not-for-profit organization that gathers and distributes food to over 500 food pantries, homeless shelters, soup kitchens and community program partners in the Greater St. Louis Area. This is a time of year when people are fighting not just the cold, but also the hunger that comes with higher heating bills, and supporting a food bank is a great way to have a powerful impact on your local community.
Over 40 million people in America struggle with food security and rely on government programs and charitable services to put food on their tables. Food banks are also facing more hardship than ever before due to operational strains from late 2025 due to the government shutdown and increased demand for assistance. They need us to step up and be donors and volunteers, and I encourage you to, at the very least, donate a few bucks today to help out.
While I always recommend supporting local food banks if you can, the St. Louis Area Foodbank is also a great choice because they provide so much support to so many organizations and are extremely transparent about how they utilize their funds. They have a perfect score on CharityNavigator and are an accredited charity with the Better Business Bureau and a partner with the United Way and Feeding America.
You can learn more at http://stlfoodbank.org/
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