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Market Halls tried to replicate its success outside London
Market Halls has closed its food hall at Intu Lakeside in Essex after under six months, with traders taking as little as £10 a day, according to Essex Live. Traders cited low-to-non-existent footfall, customers bringing in food from external restaurants, and a lack of marketing intiative from Intu and Market Halls for the failure, while Market Halls said, “We were very excited about the promise of the expansion plans of intu Lakeside but due to a variety of reasons, including delays to the opening of other key tenants, we never saw the levels of footfall required to sustain a business of our nature.”
The food hall juggernaut, which has sites in Fulham, Victoria, and the West End, had transplanted its London brands into the Intu site, including dumpling slingers BaoziInn, fried chicken from Mother Clucker, and Fanny’s Kebabs. It plans to open in Canary Wharf later this year. [Essex Live]
And in other news...
- Fresh for 2020, here are London’s 38 essential restaurants, including hand-pulled noodles in Bloomsbury and technicolour Kurdish plates in Camberwell.
- London still loves burgers.
- Hit Filipino restaurant residency Sarap brings its glass-shatterengly-skinned, melting lechon to Brixton this month.
- The problems with enforcing “device bans” at pubs and restaurants in the supposed mission of improving the ~social experience~. Hint: it’s just ableist, folks! [Twitter]
- The day after high street Mexican restaurant group Chilango confirms its company voluntary arrangement (CVA) to get rid of non-trading leases and cut rents, commercial real estate specialist Colliers International says CVAs “merely delay the inevitable failure.” Spicy. [Propel]
- Good tweet:
I've noticed being careful and nuanced on this website means absolutely fucking nothing and ppl will just assume you're stupid or read whatever they want into what you say and hyperbolic awful bullshit usually wins so fuck it, mask off. chicken nuggets are a kind of dumpling.
— give lana a gundam (@mechapoetic) January 4, 2020