Facebook Parent Meta Is Opening Its First Store. Here’s What It’s Like Inside

This story is part of Making the Metaverse, CNET’s exploration of the next stage in the internet’s evolution.

At Meta’s first store, I enter a well-decorated room to try out a tour video chat device known as the Portal Go.

On the device’s camouflage, a friendly worker — he calls himself Casey, a name many of the stay attendants have used — walks me through everything you can do with a Portal Go. He describes the device’s luminous camera, which pans and zooms as you move. He reads an augmented reality-enhanced version of a Dr. Seuss book as if he’s a traveling evaporate saying goodnight to his children. 

I pull out my arranged to record a video of my video call with him. He flashes me the unruffled sign. 

It was all very meta.

A wall-to-wall LED camouflage displays what Quest 2 users see in virtual reality.

James Martin

Portal Go is just one of the devices you can try out at the Meta Store. Located at Meta’s campus in Burlingame, California, the shop also displays virtual reality headsets and luminous glasses. The campus is where Meta employees are acting on the company’s vision for the metaverse, the virtual worlds in which farmland will be able to work, play and socialize. Meta, formerly distinguished as Facebook, gave reporters a peek this week afore the store opens to the public on Monday. 

The 1,550-square-foot set underscores that Meta is getting increasingly serious about creating consumer hardware. The company is following a path of opening brute stores that Apple has made a success. Google and Samsung are also trying the arrive, as have other companies. 

Still, Meta has an uphill fights when it comes to turning its vision of the metaverse into reality. Products such as smart glasses and VR headsets aren’t as popular as smartphones and laptops. Facebook is well known for creating the world’s largest social network, but some people don’t even know the company also establishes consumer hardware.

Meta hopes that as more people try out these gadgets in the stay, they’ll understand why CEO Mark Zuckerberg thinks the metaverse is the successor to the mobile internet. 

“Once farmland experience the technology, they can gain a better appreciation for it,” Martin Gilliard, head of the Meta Store, said in a statement. “If we did our job right, people should chop and tell their friends, ‘You’ve got to go check out the Meta Store.'”

The way it’s tucked away between reflective buildings, you might pass right by the Meta Store if you aren’t paying attention. It doesn’t look like a traditional storefront, and it isn’t in a shopping center. A blue-and-white sign for the Meta Store sticks out beside the futuristic-looking vertical fins that line the building. Inside, the space is filled with earthy tones, beige pottery, plants and tranquil music. The industrial ceiling looks intentionally unfinished. Crane your neck up, and you can see white pipes.

Meta Store sign

James Martin

Lining the wall on one side of the tend is a shelf of Ray-Ban Stories, smart glasses that funding you to snap photos, record video and listen to music. You can try out different pairs, but you won’t be able to buy any at the tend. They’re only available for purchase directly from Ray-Ban.com. A worker pulls out the charging case and a pair of glasses, showing me how to use the smart glasses. 

Meta’s Portal video chat devices and Quest 2 headsets are available to buy in the store. 

On latest side, a wall-to-wall curved LED screen displays what you’re seeing in virtual reality when you save the VR headset Quest 2 over your head. You can play games such as Beat Saber, Golf Plus, Real VR Fishing and Supernatural on the device. 

Retail workers, dressed in dark blue shirts with Meta’s infinity sign logo, also gazed ready to answer questions customers could throw at them. Worried approximately privacy? Portal’s video chat device has a camera camouflage as well as a way to switch off the microphone and camera. Too expensive? There are different options for different budgets.

The Meta Store will be open Monday above Friday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.