Growing London Food Hall Empire Heads for Canary Wharf

Market Halls will add a food hall at Canary Wharf’s Crossrail Place to its sites in Fulham, Victoria, and Oxford Circus, according to MCA. The food hall, over two floors of Blackstone’s massive leisure and office development, Cargo, is slated to open in late 2020, hopefully alongside the Elizabeth Line.

The London food halls’ burgeoning empire has drawn attention for its ability to entice genuinely exciting London restaurants to pivot to a new method of operation, particularly Roti King, Koya, and Marksman in Victoria — the latter’s Bunshop did close unexpectedly last month. Optimising these additional sites for the food hall offer, rather than hacking an essential restaurant’s square peg into a round hole, also speaks to smart business sense, married to a selection of known, variously tiered restaurant names to round things out.

This Canary Wharf opening, like Victoria, looks to capitalise on two things: the huge potential footfall of a financial and transportation hub, and an area whose daytime food at scale is currently monopolised by chains and, at Canary Wharf, one other covered ‘street food’ operation, a thorny issue that Market Halls has thus far studiously avoided.

Market Halls co-founder Simon Anderson said: “Canary Wharf has been on our radar from day one as a perfect location for Market Halls. Blackstone’s plans for Cargo are very impressive and with the eventual opening of the Elizabeth line we are very excited to have found the perfect site.”

More soon, including the restaurants that will be heading east in 2020.