Mayo Clinic dipped its toes into healthcare retail in August when it opened a health and wellness store at the Mall of America. So what are Mayo’s plans for retail’s biggest day?

“We will not open at midnight on Friday with the rest of the mall,” said spokesman Bryan Anderson. “Instead, we will open at 6 a.m., which is a bit earlier than usual, and will have limited Black Friday offerings.”

The special offerings? They’ll give a free journal to anyone who buys the Mayo Clinic Diet book and offer some special discounts to Mayo employees.

The clinic is sticking to its healthy living guns — after all, the store’s mission is to entertain and educate guests on wellness topics like nutrition, exercise and, yes, sleep.

“We’re still trying to make connections to healthy living around the holidays, but also trying to do that in the retail environment,” James Yolch, the project’s administrator, told the Pioneer Press.

Mayo just announced some changes to the store resulting from guest feedback during its first 100 days, including a new name, expanded retail offerings, free wellness assessments and new gaming kiosks. It will also expand its clinical services offered in a smaller, separate space near the store.

Acting as a prototype for a possible permanent Mayo Clinic facility to be built as part of a proposed expansion to the mall, the store is a 2,500-square-foot space designed to be a cross between a high-tech Apple store and an interactive library of Mayo Clinic health information centered around wellness.

So it seems that Mall of America shoppers won’t encounter any fighting, exhaustion or long waits in line at the clinic’s store. But if they encounter it elsewhere, you can be sure the growing number of retail healthcare clinics nearby would welcome the extra business on Black Friday.

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