The Tiffany & Co. flagship in New York added a restaurant in 2017. This was a savvy move by modern retail standards. In recent years, luxury brands have opened more of these ritzy watering holes in stores in order to keep customers captive there for longer, spending more money and marinating in branding. But while no one was really clamoring for, say, a Louis Vuitton restaurant, Tiffany was a unique case, said a former employee who worked at the store in the 2010s, before LVMH bought the brand in 2021: “So many girls were so heartbroken over the fact that you could not eat there. They were like, ‘But Breakfast at Tiffany's’ — and I was like, ‘But have you watched the movie?’”

Now, if you want to eat at the painfully Instagrammy Blue Box Café (raises hand), you basically can’t get a reservation (again, raises hand).

In this installment of “Retail Confessions,” Back Row’s signature column in which luxury retail workers talk about what it’s really like to sell the world’s most expensive fashion, we revisit Tiffany’s pre-LVMH days. Ahead, the former employee talks about what it was really like to work in the store, selling picture frames to Nick Jonas and seven-figure diamonds to very important clients.

If you worked in luxury retail and want to confess for a future column, send me a note at amyodellbooks (at) gmail (dot) com or DM me on Instagram.

Earlier in Back Row:

How was Tiffany doing when you worked there?

You could tell that they were looking to capture younger shoppers because older people weren't coming in and buying the big pieces they used to. I got the feeling that the Upper East Side ladies who had private appointments would come in every now and then, but that kind of demographic was dying out and there wasn't something that made the younger people want to spend money. No one wanted the Schlumberger stuff.

Who else came in?

We had so many celebrities. Alec Baldwin and his wife used to come in back when they had no children. We were always like, don’t acknowledge that he’s famous, just treat him like a normal person. The Jonas Brothers used to come in all the time. Kelly Rutherford from Gossip Girl.

What did they buy?

Nick Jonas came in very often to buy housewares. He walked away with picture frames one day. He came in without any bodyguards, just him in the elevator with a bunch of girls. It was the strangest thing I had ever seen. It was really embarrassing because the store manager called on the elevator and was like, “Stop Nick. I want to tell him how much my granddaughters loved his little movie.” He tried to stop him on the way out and Nick ran.

What were the private appointments like?