Mall Rivals store types and licenses
What each shop actually sells, which update added it, and how the license ladder works.
The Select Store Type panel is the character select of Mall Rivals. Each tile is a product range, a shelf language, and a license ladder. This page is the catalog. Rankings live on the store tier list. If a tile was greyed out in an old video, believe your live panel, not the thumbnail.
How licenses work
1.0 stores come with a license ladder. You do not unlock the whole catalog by existing. Earnings plus type diversity advance you — the tier panel pulses red when you have money but still need more kinds of shop. That is why a second Sports unit can be weaker than a first Florist: the game wants a mall, not a clone army. Adjacent expansion grows a floor; it does not always count as a new type. Check the panel.
Store info on the buy screen lists ID, price, sales size, and storage size. A trailer example: #010, $20,432, 14×12 sales, 4×12 storage. Bigger storage delays wholesale trips. Bigger sales floor needs more furniture and more attractiveness work.
Core types (demo through Early Access)
Fashion. Clothes, mannequins, attractiveness. Completely revised in the Store Overhaul with Beauty and Books. Needs décor or it looks closed.
Electronics. Laptops and gadgets on the original select screen. High ticket. High steal value. Pair with a lock and a cashier who can actually use the till.
Sports. Basketball/sneakers icon on the panel. The community default. Good teaching shop for pricing because tags are obvious.
Beauty. Reworked. Cosmetics. Pairs with Perfume later. Cleaning glass and restocking small SKUs is the job.
Books. Reworked. Slow, readable, low panic. Fine near a busy corridor so people wander in.
Food-style and clothing “clothiers” shops show up constantly in first-week footage. Treat grocery/food as a high-traffic, high-clean family even when the icon name on your panel differs by patch.
Store Overhaul (0.3.0) adds and reworks
May 2026’s overhaul added Butcher, Perfume, and Tobacco, and rebuilt Fashion, Beauty, and Books. It also tied attractiveness, cleanliness, and variety to customer count. If you are still playing a mental model from February, you are missing why a dirty butcher dies.
Florist landed in an April hotfix with baseball bats and store sell/close. It is a presentation shop. Skip it until you can keep the floor pretty.
1.0 four-pack
27 August 2026 added:
- Pharmacy — necessity SKUs, license ladder, serious restock.
- Home Goods — the coming-soon sofa tile that grew up.
- Hardware — tools, shelving logic, a different customer.
- Liquor Store — licensed alcohol, evening traffic, extra heat.
Each has its own product range and shelving. Do not stock them like Sports. Walk the empty unit once before you buy 400 of the wrong box.
Community regulars
Long-running series opened pet, music, and candy shops and even took a $20,000 credit for a music lease. Those types appear in real malls. They are not always on the first trailer grid. If your panel has them, they count for diversity. If it does not, do not wait for a YouTuber’s SKU.
Toys, Jewelry, and Department Store were coming-soon tiles on the first official trailer grid. Confirm in your build. Department especially is a staffing raid.
How to choose in 30 seconds
- Open the panel, ignore greyed-out tiles.
- Pick a type you can explain to a hired cashier in one sentence.
- Check storage size versus how often you like walking to wholesale.
- Check the tier list if two options feel equal.
- Check your perk plan. Crime wants lockable storage. Labor wants simple roles. Commerce wants SKUs with a visible market.
Synergy, not Pokémon
You do not need them all. You need a mall that makes sense to a walking customer. Fashion next to Beauty is a corridor. Hardware next to Home Goods is a corridor. Liquor next to Pharmacy is a joke your board might actually vote on. Place with expansion routes in mind so one wholesale trip feeds two back rooms.
When 1.0 dropped four types at once, old “five categories” demo talk ended. Update your brain, then update the lease.
Frequently Asked Questions
Quick answers players actually search for in Mall Rivals.
How many store types are in Mall Rivals 1.0?
More than the demo’s five. Overhaul added Butcher, Perfume, and Tobacco; 1.0 added Pharmacy, Home Goods, Hardware, and Liquor. Check the live panel for extras like florist or pet.
What was in the original Select Store Type grid?
Fashion, Electronics, Sports, Beauty, and Books as live tiles, with Jewelry, Home Goods, Toys, and Department Store marked as later tiles in the first trailer.
Do I need many store types to progress?
The tier panel pulses when you have earnings but lack type diversity. A second identical shop is not always progress.
Where should I rank these types?
On the store tier list. This page is the catalog; that page is the pick order.