Retail sells to people with money. Drycleaning caters to adults. Greeting card stores want adults to buy their cards and gifts. Shoe stores cater to people who can spend 50-100 bucks on a pair of shoes. Certainly not to children. They're all trying to capture adults' dollars. So the best way to reach these adults is by offering something to their kids! Huh?
Parents travel to the stores by themselves and with their kids. If the children can be kept busy while shopping, the parents are happy. That's why IKEA furniture stores have playrooms for kids, special food in their cafeterias just for children, and go out of their way so kids will look forward to a shopping trip. When parents think of a place to shop, they remember that the children are happier at IKEA, and tend to enjoy their shopping trip more. Plus, the kids talk about the place and how much fun they have there, so the parents are reminded that IKEA is a good place to shop. Same philosophy goes for the drycleaning place that offers lollipops for their patrons (adults like the candy too). Parents will frequent the place more because they know their children will behave better when they know they're also going to get something. Any store that can reasonably expect parents to shop should prepare in advance to please their children. A special corner with coloring books and crayons, maybe a few puzzle books or magazines, and certainly a small stock of sweets will go a long way to reminding parents that your store is a better place to shop than the competition down the street. And of course the kids will remind the parents where they like to shop, so you've added another reason for the parents to enter the store.