Why don't American shopping malls have grocery stores?

So, part of this depends on the age of the mall. That’s also reflective in people’s answers here. The oldest malls were intended to mimic downtown shopping districts, with an emphasis on the higher ending shopping districts. So the oldest traditional American shopping malls tended to be anchored by major traditional department stores (Think Macy’s, not Target) and then would be filled with smaller clothing stores, jewelers, toy stores, book stores, maybe an arcade or move theater, etc.—And there would traditionally be a a food court as well as restaurants. The goal was to keep people inside the mall. The malls didn’t want people associating the mall with needing to grab eggs on the way home, both because it would make people leave sooner and because it hurt the more upscale vibes that the mall wanted to encourage. So most Americans associate grocery stores and big box stores (like Target, Wal-Mart, IKEA, etc.) with strip malls (And Americans do not refer to “strip malls” as just “malls”—“Malls” mean an indoor shopping mall), the line of stores with giant parking lot sprawl. A lot of these stores grew up primarily in the suburbs, and it’s simply easier for the store to load and unload in a one story box box store with giant parking lots around and the rents tend to be cheaper. And a lot of times indoor malls are surrounded by multiple strip malls, so Americans might be used to seeing a grocery store or movie theater NEAR the mall in their respective parking lots and strip malls, but not IN the mall. Now, obviously, individual malls even at the earliest points may have chosen to include grocery stores or big box retailers, but that’s not typically how malls were handled. But fewer and fewer people shop at malls now. Many have closed over the decades. Fewer department stores exist, which means fewer department stores can anchor a mall. Malls have had to get creative. So now malls increasingly do feature grocery stores, movie theaters, and traditional big box retailers as anchor tenants. A lot of malls have added services like doctors’ offices or daycares to fill their spaces. And that’s why for some people, it’s normal for a mall to have a grocery story in the U.S. while a lot of Americans wouldn’t associate a mall with a grocery store—It’s reflective of when people last went to the mall as well as their own memories and ideas of what the mall even is. You seemingly ran into older malls that haven’t had to turn to including grocery stores as an anchor tenant yet.