An unusual pop-up retail store has opened in the Aventura Mall in suburban Miami offering anything and everything for novel coronavirus protection, from a $9 bottle of grapefruit-scented automatic spray hand sanitizer to $45 rhinestone-studded Black Lives Matter facial coverings, local media outlets have reported.
COVID-19 Essentials on the second floor of the mall was the idea of Nadav Benimetzky, whose store offers a UV light sterilizer that you use like a magic cleaning wand and a shoe cover dispenser.
“The demand was there,” Benimetzky told Fox network affiliate WSVN in Miami. “Everybody was kind of looking for masks and sanitizers and anything to do with COVID.
“Anything that’s COVID-19 related, we have it.”
Although local ordinances require facial masks, COVID-19 Essentials uses a thermal imaging camera to scan your body temperature upon entry and can detect if your wearing a mask, Benimetzky said.
The store has infrared thermometers, face shields, gloves, non-contact door openers, phone sterilizers and seemingly countless varieties of hand sanitizer.
Among its hand sanitizer offerings is a two-ounce bottle of gel for $5.99, which, according to the Miami Herald, would sell for about $1.59 at a local drug store.
Facial coverings are another item in numerous quantities at COVID-19 Essentials, from a Romero Britto designer model, ones with carbon fibers to a more simple $29 basic mask.
“Entering Aventura Mall, it is mandatory to wear a mask, and if you’re already in Aventura Mall, might as well make it a fashionable mask,” Benimetzky said. “So we carry every single mask you can imagine.
“People want to have their own masks customized in a couple minutes. Everyone wants to express their own fashion, and we’re here to really customize the mask, A to Z.”
The nature of pop-up retail stores is that they exist for days or maybe weeks. Benimetzky said he plans to be open as long as the need remains.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.