Future Food, as specialist food advisors to architects and designers, have long promoted the idea that good food and good design are intertwined in a harmonious relationship that provides an essential platform for success in any food & hospitality business. Now more than ever as hospitality pivots due to unpredictable and pervasive external factors, design and food will need to evolve to create experiences that adapt to meet the ‘new’ needs of customers and ensure satisfaction is maintained in order to retain as many customers as possible in the coming months and years.

More and more people are opting for modern hospitality spaces with a strong natural theme and overlay when they are choosing where to spend their quality time.

In the changing retail landscape Neighbourhood shopping centres are facing competition from online shopping, high street food deliveries like Uber & Deliveroo, high street dining precinct and the inevitable introduction of smart casual/ family restaurants within the building footprint of stand-alone cinemas and other entertainment precincts.

Smart Casual and Family Dining precincts are no longer the BASTAN of the larger malls and retail precincts. The smaller malls are starting to recognise the many benefits of increasing the food GLA and the development of dining precincts. They want to include roof tops and dining lanes.

Francis Loughran’s projects and study tours take him far and wide in search of the best food and the best brands when it comes to food. Over the past few weeks Francis has been reviewing some of New Zealand’s newest and hippest new food designations; The Press Hall in Wellington’s CBD (80 Willis Street) and Queen’s Rise in Queen Street, central Auckland. Today, the focus here is on Wellington.

NH Architecture is one of Melbourne’s leading architecture studios and currently they are working on a number of retail precincts where food and hospitality are central to the development. Having partnered with Future Food on a number of projects over the years, we sat down with NH’s Managing Director, Roger Nelson, to talk about his view on food and design and what is considered by an architect when a hospitality precinct is being developed.