Most stores can be described in one phrase.
A shoe store sells shoes. A hardware store sells hardware. You know what is inside before you walk in.
Now try describing a store that sells a dining table, a bag of coffee beans, a bottle of wine, a Turkish rug, a set of drinking glasses and a box of Italian cookies.
That is not a category. That is a shrug.
And yet the format works, has worked since the 1950s, and survives in shopping centers across the country while far more focused retailers have closed.
The incoherence is the strategy, and once you see why, the whole thing makes sense.