Talk about disruption and the need for innovation.
The F+B sector has never been under so much pressure. Following unprecedented growth over the last five years, the brakes are now being applied to individual store sales as developed nations start to reach saturation point or in many cases simply over-fooded. Under particular threat is The Food Court. Not as accessible day and night as entertainment and leisure precincts with their rooftops, water features and cinema/bowling/play anchors. Also not as ubercool as the new wave Food Halls and Food Courts featuring 5-10 food offers with a sea of common seats between them are failing fast as they lose favour with Millennials and the iGeneration.
Concerned for the future of these 1000 – 2000m2 of space in shopping centres, airports, universities, office blocks and hospitals, here’s three strategies Brain & Poulter has devised in recent years to reinvent the food court proposition and add or maintain the asset value in a difficult trading climate.
STRATEGY ONE: DROP A BOMB ON THE FOOD COURT
Not literally, but don’t be afraid to NOT have a food court. The word Food Court is actually not entirely accurate. Brain & Poulter defines a Food Court as a collection of seven food catering tenancies supported by a common seating area. Many Food Courts average 5 – 6 outlets with the anchor tenancy rarely a fast food major, limited branded offers and no strategy as to the tenancy mix hierarchy.
An asset is lucky if its “pseudo” food court is located at least on the busiest travel path but we can think of several locations where the Food Court was developed as a “destination”. FYI “food court” +”destination” = disaster! That’s why some pretty smart clients at Yu Feng/Retail First asked the question “Do we really need a food court?” Working with the owners, ourselves and Buchan, we devised a strategy to decommision the 6 outlet Food Court, back fill it with some mini-majors and create a new “heart” around the Centre Court comprising three quick serve casual dining outlets with their own attached seating and three kiosks in the common seating area. This move has reinvigorated the Centre and elevated food as a leisure based activity that extends the stay in Centre.
STRATEGY TWO: DOUBLE DIP
What McDonald’s starting telling shopping centre leasing execs some 10 years back when it came time to renew in a Food Court was that there wasn’t the length of trade in a Food Court like there was on a pad site or high street to justify the store investment. This was highlighted further with the development of so many new dining precincts through the past five years and F&B operators getting to experience the night time economy.
So what can be done if you can’t sustain both a Food Court and a Dining Precinct? Well, you do both BUT you do it with the same tenancies. This was the strategy we worked with the Mirvac team on to add some real value at Stanhope. Conducting some deep customer and competitor research we curated a tenancy mix of four strong lunchtime cuisines and four cuisines that could trade at lunch and dinner and then worked up a design that allowed the day/night tenancies to trade both into the Mall and out to the street. The smoke and mirrors of the double sided trading means there are around seven lunchtime offers co-located in the Mall by day and once the majority of specialty retail shuts down for the night and the Mall loses it’s buzz, the double sided tenancies change their focus to trading directly onto a nicely landscaped street-facing precinct.
STRATEGY THREE: A FOOD COURT BY ANY OTHER NAME
For our last strategy we head west to Belmont, owned by the Perron Group and managed by JLL. The strategy needed for this centre was somewhat different and related to how to support a major supermarket expansion to create a fresh food precinct between two major supermarket anchors. Now fresh food precincts are a whole other “kettle of fish” (foodie pun intended) when it comes to their future but back to food catering as the focus of this article!
It wasn’t sustainable to fill all the specialty retail stores between both supermarkets with fresh food specialty but our analysis showed food catering was still under cooked (another intended foodie pun there), so instead of another food court, the fresh food precinct became a hybrid mix of fresh food and food catering, with plenty of communal seating. The beauty of blurring the lines between food retail and food court is an active precinct with plenty of activity and natural levels of place-making from the fresh food merchandising.
THERE’S HOPE FOR FOOD COURTS
The aim of this article was to demonstrate that all is not lost for Food Courts. Hopefully these strategies inspire you to re-think your asset and look at creative ways to add value to this important dining destination.
