As the business plans a course to making its highly praised metaverse mainstream, Meta Platforms Inc is preparing to launch its first physical store where customers can try out and purchase virtual reality headgear and other products. Meta announced on Monday that the 1,550-square-foot Meta Store, which will open on May 9 at the company’s Burlingame office in California, will contain demos for its Quest 2 VR headset and Portal video conferencing gadget, as well as Ray-augmented Ban’s reality (AR) glasses.

Except for the Ray-Ban glasses, all of the devices will be offered for sale at the store. According to the firm, the products can also be purchased online through a new shopping tab on meta.com. Meta is putting a lot of money into the metaverse, which is a virtual area where individuals may communicate and work.

“The Meta Store is going to assist customers to make the link to how our products can be the entrance to the metaverse in the future,” Martin Gilliard, Head of Meta Store, said in a statement. “We aren’t selling the metaverse at our store, but we hope that people will come in and learn a little more about how our products may help them connect to it.”

The 1,550-square feet store will feature products such as Meta’s first pair of smart glasses with Ray-Ban and Facebook’s line of video chat devices called Portal.

Meta will charge 47.5% from their creators

The Facebook owner announced earlier this month that it would begin testing capabilities for monetizing digital goods and experiences within Horizon Worlds, a virtual reality platform Meta debuted late last year. Meta also announced that creators of digital experiences and materials would be charged a 47.5 per cent fee, a decision that has sparked anger from some app developers.

Shoppers keeping an eye on the space are anticipating the arrival of the next iteration of the Quest 2 VR headset, which is expected in the second quarter and is largely seen as important to the company’s metaverse goals by analysts.