The Troubling Economics of Food Halls
heated.medium.com
The Troubling Economics of Food Halls
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Re: The Troubling Economics of Food Halls
#2Interesting read even if a lot of it boils down to the restaurant business being tough and that's true even if food halls simplify some things (while bringing their own set of costs and constraints).
The piece also highlights how some stalls probably haven't given enough thought to how their menu works in the context of a food hall. Certainly some menus have more all-day appeal than others which is a problem for the latter, especially if they're required to keep a full range of hours.
Re: The Troubling Economics of Food Halls
#3“Perhaps this is due to our placeless society where the town green was... and now gig workers drop packages”
Counterpoint: food courts are terrible and the food in these places is typically good, varied, and wonderful. Of course they would win over chain food courts. It’s nice to have variety. I don’t understand why the author has to insert this random, anecdotal hypothesis looking toward yesteryear.
These things are ancient. Literally been around in markets forever. This is not a new concept.
That said - abusive lease terms are no good. Definitely would read the lease before signing!
Re: The Troubling Economics of Food Halls
#4This whole article feels like they're trying to brew trouble that isn't really there. They compare cost per sqft of rental space in a food hall, which they admin includes many extra things related to running the surrounding food hall (including build out, sanitary maintenance, etc) to renting empty business space and claims the food hall is expensive. They admit that many vendors found the food hall to be productive for their businesses, yet focus on the ones that failed without citing any comparison to success / failure rates of similar opportunities like food trucks or traditional restaurants. There's also vague criticisms about a misalignment between how the hall is marketed to visitors (creative, artisan) vs the pressures put on the vendors (simple to produce foods, low time-to-table), but this is nothing unique to food halls. Every restaurant wants high-throughput with the appearance of top quality food. Overall, strong meh from me.
Re: The Troubling Economics of Food Halls
#5This whole article feels like they're trying to brew trouble that isn't really there. They compare cost per sqft of rental space in a food hall, which they admin includes many extra things related to running the surrounding food hall (including build out, sanitary maintenance, etc) to renting empty business space and claims the food hall is expensive. They admit that many vendors found the food hall to be productive…
> This whole article feels like they're trying to brew trouble that isn't really there.
And generalize from a few vendors at one food hall to all vendors at all food halls.
Re: The Troubling Economics of Food Halls
#6This whole article feels like they're trying to brew trouble that isn't really there. They compare cost per sqft of rental space in a food hall, which they admin includes many extra things related to running the surrounding food hall (including build out, sanitary maintenance, etc) to renting empty business space and claims the food hall is expensive. They admit that many vendors found the food hall to be productive…
My main takeaway was that booming food courts lead at least some naive would-be restauranteurs to think that opening a stall is straightforward and many don't do nearly enough up-front planning and thinking.
I do suspect the whole upscale food court trend is probably overheated right now but most of them do seem to still get a lot of traffic.
Re: The Troubling Economics of Food Halls
#7The massively disappointing thing about modern food halls is that they aren’t like classic ones in Seattle, Toronto, or other places where you can actually get groceries. There should be, at minimum, local bread, meat, produce, and dairy at any of these places. Instead it’s all overpriced food porn.
Re: The Troubling Economics of Food Halls
#8My brain kept leaping to this analogy...
Chef : Software Engineer
2017 : 2010
Donaldson : Apple
Alcohol : iMessage
Food Hall : App Store
30% : 30%
Re: The Troubling Economics of Food Halls
#9The massively disappointing thing about modern food halls is that they aren’t like classic ones in Seattle, Toronto, or other places where you can actually get groceries. There should be, at minimum, local bread, meat, produce, and dairy at any of these places. Instead it’s all overpriced food porn.
I imagine the rents at a lot of these places make it difficult to profitably sell unprepared food--especially things like vegetables as opposed to twee craft honey and the like.
Re: The Troubling Economics of Food Halls
#10The massively disappointing thing about modern food halls is that they aren’t like classic ones in Seattle, Toronto, or other places where you can actually get groceries. There should be, at minimum, local bread, meat, produce, and dairy at any of these places. Instead it’s all overpriced food porn.
I imagine the rents at a lot of these places make it difficult to profitably sell unprepared food--especially things like vegetables as opposed to twee craft honey and the like.
If it's ingredients that they use anyways then instead of using some back closet for storage they can simply put them out on display.