DEATH OF THE LITTLE GUN FOOD COURT … EXPLORING THE PATH TO RE-INVENTION
Regional versus Sub-Regional Food Courts
Sub-regional shopping centres face tough challenges ahead in benefitting from the boom in food catering. Almost all sub-regionals have a food court in the composition, but unlike their Big Gun brother who offer a variety of 13 outlets in their food courts, the Little Gun sub-regionals range from about 4 – 8 choices only. There attractiveness is further eroded by the fact that very few brands or majors are represented in sub-regional food courts. This leads to less engagement with the food court by shoppers when they are in a sub-regional centre than when they are in a larger regional centre.
With 4 times as many sub-regional food courts than regional ones, Little Gun food courts don’t add too much value or point of difference to attract additional shopping centre traffic. They function merely as an incidental and impulse purchase in a pragmatic and often “vanilla” environment.
With growing pressure on sub-regional centres to remain relevant to their shoppers, Brain&Poulter has been working with pro-active asset owners to re-invent the sub-regional food catering experience and drive improved productivity and rents. Here’s 2 solutions we’ve helped develop and a third really cool idea we’ve come across.
Aim to trade Day & Night
Problem: For many sub regional centres, the lack of an entertainment anchor means the food curt really only appeals to customers in the Centre during the day. This means a food catering outlet in a sub regional reaches an MAT of only about half that which they would achieve if they were located in a regional centre. That makes it hard to attract brands and top tier operators.
Solution: A great solution to this can be seen at Mirvac’s Stanhope Village in Sydney where we helped Mirvac create a hybrid food court and restaurant precinct. After carefully calculating how many fast and slow food tenancies could be sustained. The crux of the strategy was to create double sided slow food tenancies that could trade to the street in the evening but also offer a “fast food” counter to the Mall to complement 3-4 fixed internal fast food offers. We are super proud of this strategy and what it has done to connect Stanhope to it’s customers by day and night. Some great leasing from the Mirvac team saw a well crafted food offering including many headline brands.
Figure 1 Mirvac Stanhope Village- casual dining trades to the street and into the mall. Photo Credit Danielle Krebs
Remove the Food Court & Re-distribute The Offer
Problem: The Centre traffic can only sustain a 6 outlet food court so the calibre of operators is sub-standard and lacks appeal. Assignments are common and no-one re-invests in their store because the average MAT is too low.
Solution: Brookside, a sub-regional in Brisbane took a blow when MYER decided to exited. The owners and Centre Management team took the opportunity to re-consider what the trade area was lacking and were able to replace MYER with a Target. There was further opportunity to add a new mini major but there was no space, so the decision was made to backfill the food court of around 1,000m2 with the new mini major and to create a new food “heart” around the Centre Court comprising a mix of in line larger format casual dining shops complimented by several fast kiosk model food offerings. This effectively is making food a “hero” precinct instead of a poor relation and aims to draw customers into the heart of the Centre to increase dwell time. A really clever re-invention.
Figure 2 Yu Feng/Retail First Brookside. Image & Design Buchan
Dare To Break The Valuation Mould
Problem: For many sub-regional centres, a fixed food court of only a handful of offers becomes incredibly boring for both customers and also the centre’s retail staff working population who are frequent users of the food court. Everyday it’s the same 6 or so unbranded outlets to pick from – very ho hum.
Solution: B&P has been proposing this for many of our University clients so we were pleased to come across this model under a residential tower in Melbourne’s downtown. HWKR is a 5 outlet food hall with only 1 tenancy on a fixed term retail lease. The other 3 in line stores and 1 kiosk have been built and fitted out by the building owners and are “let” on a casual basis of around 6 months per store to entrepreneurial and artisan foodies who are passionate about making delicious food but can’t afford to fit out a store. For sub-regionals with significant student or millennial representation in the trade area this is a potential way to refresh and remain relevant to a demanding and easily bored customer.
Figure 3 HWKR Melbourne
Innovate or Perish
3 problems – 3 different solutions. It’s B&P’s mission to innovate and create new to market concepts constantly. It’s a call out to all Little Guns to join us on this path to re-invention. Click here to organise a coffee catch up to discuss the specifics of your Centre.