POSITIONING YOUR SHOPPING CENTRE’S FOOD & HOSPITALITY FOR THE FUTURE (CONTINUED)

Dining out is so much more than food on a plate – think street-labels, authentic flavours and eclectic food offers all amounting to memorable customer experiences. These are the key elements to develop the food and hospitality within our shopping centres and mixed-use developments, to cater to the needs of our growing cities, the spend potential of millennials and how food is a crucial anchor for many shopping centres.

JLL’s Director of Retail Research, Andrew Quillfeldt stated in a article on Shopping Centre news (JLL report highlights dining is key to driving customer traffic), “Food is doing well. I think it is the general consumer trend toward dining out. We have looked at research on spending by generation, and younger generations are spending much more on dining out and a much lower proportion on groceries; it is quite dramatic.”

The JLL 20th Retail Centre Manager Centre survey confirms that food spending is growing 4.1% year-on-year. Ref: Australian Bureau Statistics

Today’s customers are craving genuineness in food, dining and hospitality. Future Food’s in-depth research into the dining-experience confirms time and time again across all our local and global projects, that eclectic, artistic, craft-food, artisan and street labels are the future in delivering projects with a strong and sustainable point of difference – becoming crucial anchors to both shopping centres and mixed use developments.

There is so much more to food and dining; our current commercial hospitality neighbourhood and business community projects confirm consumers appear to tire of long-established food brands and traditional shopping locations that fail to reinvent themselves as modern hospitality clusters that are living-centres within our communities.

The local and global boom of artisan food brands, concepts and products coupled with new, experiential food halls and casual dining destinations shows that there is an exciting and profitable future ahead for developers and operators alike, provided they think differently about food precincts, food halls, dining destinations, hospitality clusters and fresh food markets.

Shopping centres and mixed use developments must look at the customer as an “experience-explorer”, with a full understanding of today’s informed customer’s different values and attitudes in order to stay relevant and successful.

Our work takes us to many great places. Some of our recent favourites highlight how food in beverage is catering to and shaping the needs of our growing cities.