If you live anywhere near Sandestin, you already have an opinion about Grand Boulevard. It's the outdoor shopping center at the resort's front door, the one with Anthropologie and Lilly Pulitzer and a movie theater, the place you send out-of-town guests when they ask where to spend an afternoon. You've probably walked past Fleming's and Emeril's Coastal Italian a hundred times without ever eating at either, because those are occasion restaurants, not Tuesday-night restaurants.
That version of Grand Boulevard is still there. But look at what's actually opened in the last six months, and a different pattern shows up. A small-town bakery from DeFuniak Springs just opened its second location on the green. An eyewear brand built around eye exams and insurance, not souvenir sunglasses, opened its doors in April. And a sports bar company that already runs a 30-year-old institution over on 30A is finishing out a 4,800-square-foot space at the western entrance, on record as saying they built the concept for the people who live nearby, not just the people passing through for a week.
None of those are the kind of businesses that exist to catch a beach vacation impulse buy. They're the kind you use on a random Wednesday. That's the actual story here, and it's easy to miss if you're only scanning the retail roster for what's shiny and new.
The Difference Between a Shopping Trip and an Errand
Grand Boulevard has always had two audiences layered on top of each other. There's the visitor economy, the reason Vineyard Vines and Tommy Bahama and a ten-screen cinema make sense in a town center at a resort entrance. And there's the resident economy, the smaller, quieter set of businesses that exist because people actually live within a few miles and need a haircut, a pair of glasses, or a coffee that isn't part of a vacation.
For years, the resident side of that ledger was thin. A Publix. A Supercuts. A few professional offices tucked behind the storefronts, easy to miss unless you had a reason to walk past them. The retail everyone talked about, the reason Grand Boulevard shows up on "best shopping" lists, was built for people who don't live here.
What's opened this year tips that balance, at least a little. And the businesses themselves are being specific about who they think their customer actually is.
What's Actually Opened, and What's Still Coming
| Business | Status as of September 2026 | What it signals |
|---|---|---|
| Perla Baking Co. | Open, second location for the DeFuniak Springs bakery | An artisan bakery known for scratch pastries and community gathering space, not a beach-town novelty |
| Warby Parker | Opened April 2026 | An eyewear brand built around in-house eye exams, the kind of stop you make because you need glasses, not because you're on vacation |
| Shades Bar & Grill | Still pending as of the most recent update, previously targeted for late summer 2026 | A 264-seat sports bar from Spell Restaurant Group, occupying 4,800 square feet at the western-most entrance on US Highway 98 |
| Grand Boulevard Farmers Market | Ongoing, every Saturday, year-round, rain or shine | The one fixture that has always served the daily-use crowd, regardless of season |
Two of the four are already part of the weekly rotation if you live here. One is still a question mark, and that's worth sitting with for a minute.
Why a DeFuniak Springs Bakery Chose the Resort's Front Door
Perla Baking Co. didn't start as a resort brand. It opened in 2019 on the historic main street of DeFuniak Springs, an inland lake town known for baked goods made with responsibly sourced ingredients and a role as a gathering spot for that community. When the company decided to open a second location, Grand Boulevard was the pick, not a beach storefront closer to the water.
Walton County's own spring tourism roundup described the new location as designed to be part of the daily rhythm of the community, which is an unusual way to describe a bakery inside what's often marketed as a shopping destination. That phrase only makes sense if the business is betting on repeat, local customers rather than one-time vacation traffic. A bakery selling croissants to someone who's leaving in four days doesn't need to think about daily rhythm. A bakery selling to someone who lives five minutes away does.
Warby Parker tells a similar story from a different angle. It's not a souvenir shop or a beachwear brand. It's built around a practical need, glasses and eye exams, the kind of errand you run because you have to, not because you're on vacation and feeling spontaneous. Its April 2026 opening quietly added a category to Grand Boulevard's mix that has nothing to do with tourism.
The One That's Still Missing
Shades Bar & Grill is the most interesting piece of this, because it's the one still not open, and because the company was unusually direct about who it's for. When Spell Restaurant Group announced the project in the fall of 2025, the plan called for a second location of a 30-year-old Inlet Beach institution, seating 264 people with more than a dozen beer taps and a chef-driven menu, in a space at the western-most entrance to Grand Boulevard along US Highway 98. Howard Group's real estate team, which manages the property, framed it at the time as filling a gap the surrounding neighborhood had been waiting on for a first-class sports bar experience.
That's a different pitch than "come visit while you're on vacation." A sports bar built around the idea that it's a neighborhood's regular spot, the place you go for a Sunday game or a weeknight trivia round, only works if there's a base of people nearby who'll actually use it that way more than once a season.
As of the most recent reporting, Shades was still slated to open, with the timeline moving from late summer 2026 toward later in the year. If you live nearby and haven't seen it open yet, that's consistent with what's been reported. It's the missing piece in a lineup that otherwise reads like a bet on daily use over vacation traffic, and it's worth watching for an actual opening date rather than assuming the original target held.
The Saturday Constant
None of this is new in the sense of "Grand Boulevard just discovered locals exist." The farmers market has run every Saturday, year-round, rain or shine, for longer than any of these storefronts have been open, with vendors selling produce, local honey, jams, flowers and handmade soaps. That's the one part of Grand Boulevard that was never built around a tourist calendar. It runs in February when the town center is quiet and in July when it's packed, because it was never dependent on who's visiting that particular week.
The market is the baseline. It's proof that a resident thread has run underneath Grand Boulevard's tourist-facing surface the whole time, even when the storefronts around it were stocked for a different customer. What's changed this year is that the thread got a little thicker, with a bakery and an optometry brand joining it, and a sports bar aiming to join by the end of the year.
What This Actually Means If You Live Here
If you've been treating Grand Boulevard as the place you take visitors and otherwise avoid on a normal weekend, this year is a reasonable moment to look again. The bakery and the eyewear shop are already open, already part of what you can fold into an ordinary week rather than a special occasion. The sports bar is still a question mark, but it's the kind of business that only gets built when a company believes there's a year-round neighborhood base to support it, not just a summer crowd.
None of this changes what Grand Boulevard has always been for visitors. The national retailers and the special-occasion restaurants aren't going anywhere. What's shifted is that the newest additions are aimed a little closer to home, at the people who'll actually be walking those brick paths on a random Tuesday in February, long after the summer traffic has cleared out.
If you're weighing what it's actually like to live near Sandestin day to day, not just visit it, that kind of shift in who a place is building for tells you more than any retail directory can. The Babe Group spends its time in these neighborhoods for exactly that reason, watching what's actually changing on the ground rather than repeating a resort brochure. If you're curious what your own home near Sandestin is worth in a market that's clearly still investing in itself, start your move with a free home valuation.
