A mobile app company that gives shoppers incentives for taking photos of their receipts is expanding its Chicago office and moving to a newly built West Loop building as it bulks up its local headcount.
Fetch Rewards has signed a lease for more than 21,000 square feet on the top three floors of 609 W. Randolph St., a 15-story office building completed earlier this year, the company confirmed. Fetch, which is based in Madison, Wis., but has its largest office in Chicago, will relocate its 226 local employees to the building from roughly 14,000 square feet it subleases today at 300 S. Riverside.
The deal aligns with the trend of downtown office tenants flocking to new and recently updated buildings since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a movement mainly driven by companies looking for ways to entice workers to show up to the office rather than work from home. While overall vacancy at downtown office buildings stands at a record high, the share of available space at top-tier, or Class A, buildings dropped to 14.7% at the end of the third quarter from 17% at the same time in 2021, according to data from brokerage CBRE.
Fetch’s lease is a key win for New York-based Vista Property Group, which developed the 100,000-square-foot building on speculation, or without any tenants signed. Though the building’s small footprint made that a relatively low-stakes gamble, Vista was betting it could lure tenants despite a broad trend of companies embracing the rise of remote work and shedding office space. Landing Fetch has helped validate that thesis, combining with a handful of other recent small deals that have brought the building’s occupancy to 63%, according to a statement from CBRE, which oversees the property’s leasing.
Fetch Chief People Officer Rachel Olchowka said the company needed more space as its local team has grown during the pandemic, though it leaves in-office time requirements up to leaders of its various departments rather than mandating it for all employees.
“We know some critical mass of folks work better and create better, stronger relationships when they come in,” Olchowka said. “We want to make people want to be there, and as we were looking for office space, (that) was a huge piece.”
Olchowka said the company exclusively looked in the trendy Fulton Market District when it began its new office search before deciding the neighborhood’s distance from Union Station and Ogilvie Transportation Center would be a problem for its staff, many of whom commute to the train stations.
The company determined its square footage requirement assuming most people would be in the office two days per week, “and we thought we’d comfortably fit in that space, even with the headcount growth we were projecting over the next three years,” Olchowka said, though she did not provide details of the company’s hiring plans. The company has 32 Chicago-based job openings listed on its website.
Fetch has grown its total headcount to 834 workers today from just 112 at the beginning of 2020, according to a spokeswoman, and its Chicago workforce has grown to 226 from 42 over that span. Fetch also has offices in Birmingham, Ala. and New York, among other locations nationwide.
The company announced in April it had raised $240 million in equity and debt to fuel its continued expansion. Fetch said at the time it had 13 million active users who had submitted more than 2 billion receipts and earned more than $340 million in rewards points.
Major consumer-products companies pay Fetch to offer targeted incentives to customers who join its program, and for access to data.
A Vista spokesman did not provide a comment on the Fetch lease. With its leasing momentum at 609 W. Randolph, the developer is seeking city approval for another 15-story office building one block west at 640 W. Randolph St.
Vista has also been among the most active investors in Fulton Market over the past couple years. The firm is now pursuing plans to develop three residential buildings on North Morgan Street in the neighborhood that could include almost 1,600 apartments.
