Brick-and-Mortar

The term brick-and-mortar refers to a traditional street-side business that offers products and services to its customers face-to-face in an office or store that the business owns or rents. The local grocery store and the corner bank are examples of brick-and-mortar companies. Brick-and-mortar businesses have found it difficult to compete with mostly web-based businesses like Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) because the latter usually have lower operating costs and greater flexibility.