Meta is opening a physical Metaverse-themed store in the San Francisco Bay Area

Meta, the parent company of social media giant Facebook, is opening a retail store on the San Francisco peninsula to provide hardware for the virtual reality space.

In a Monday announcement, Meta said it will open a retail store in Burlingame, California, on May 9, designed to offer interactive demonstrations of the company's hardware products, including virtual reality headsets, video communications displays and smart glasses. The store, which will be located on Meta's campus -- its headquarters are in Menlo Park -- will feature a wall-to-wall curved LED screen that shows what users see with Meta headsets.

"The Meta Store will help people connect, making our product a gateway to the Metaverse in the future," said store owner Martin Gilliard. "We won't be selling the Metaverse in our store, but hopefully people will come in and out knowing more about how our products will help them connect with the Metaverse."

Facebook, which changed its name to Meta in October 2021, said at the time that its focus had expanded beyond social media, and later announced its vision for the Metaverse, which connects online social experiences and the physical world. While tech giants, including Apple, have brick-and-mortar stores around the world, Facebook's roughly 2.9 billion users haven't had the chance to step into a company retail store since the company was founded in 2004.

In the Metaverse, however, many companies are acquiring virtual assets, with electronics giant Samsung launching a Metaverse Store in the blockchain-powered world of Decentraland in January. Reports also suggest that major retailers like Walmart may also be preparing to use Meta.