Time Out Market Plans Huge Food Hall for Waterloo

Time Out intends to open its first London food hall in Waterloo by 2021, as first reported by Shares Magazine.

A conditional lease — which does not include the license agreement that scuppered its plans to open Spitalfields — covers a two-floor, 32,500 square foot unit in Waterloo station. “Visitors will get to enjoy 17 of the city’s most acclaimed chefs and restaurateurs,” with the model of converting readymade successes into small-scale sequels following in the footsteps of Bloomberg Arcade, Kerb’s planned hall in Covent Garden, Market Halls Fulham and Victoria, and — some of — shipping container shopping centre Boxpark. There are no stipulations in place for new traders; the company also “continues to pursue” planning permission for Spitalfields, which was roundly rejected by Tower Hamlets council in 2017.

Didier Souillat, chief executive of Time Out Market, said:

London is home to an outstanding and wonderfully diverse culinary and cultural scene of which Time Out Market will showcase the very best. It is all about the democratisation of fine dining: making it casual, and casual extraordinary. Time Out Market will be a place where locals and visitors can really get to know and experience the city.

The democratisation message is in step with Market Halls — bankable iterations of London’s critical darlings. Whether or not it will be truly democratic, spanning a range of price points, cuisines, and cultures, will of course remain to be seen. The market is the second 2021 opening planned, after Prague, with five north American sites in Chicago, New York, Montreal, Boston, and Miami planned for 2019. The original opened in Lisbon in 2014.

More soon.