Mixed grill
Food and beverage play a vital role in mixed-use developments, providing potential to drive footfall, dwell, spend, positive perceptions and loyalty.
To ensure optimal execution, landlords must first determine what they hope the F&B offer will help them to achieve, and consider the audience and behaviour they can and wish to attract. Only then can the appropriate format, price-point, brand and amount of F&B be determined.
Understanding success criteria is key. For the correct F&B mix to be selected, landlords must establish and prioritise their aims. Factors to be considered include:
Direct economic performance of the F&B offer – how important is maximising direct sales and rental income?
Economic performance of the wider development – will the F&B be considered a success if it leads to maximised value of the overall development?
Audience attracted – including the audience profile, volume, visits by time of day and day of week
Audience satisfaction and perception of users and non-users
Industry perception in both the landlord and occupier community
Social performance – how many and what quality of jobs to be created, how does F&B generate engagement with the local community?
Environmental performance in terms of resource use, recycling and sourcing of product.
When combining these varying aims with diverse locations and audiences, it is clear every development and its set of requirements is unique. Pragma's global experience provides us with exposure to a number of schemes, notable for different reasons, which can assist in informing F&B selection criteria.
The Circle in Zurich is a mixed-use development site attached to Zurich Airport and only nine minutes from the city centre. The Circle plays host to a number of offices, a university hospital, hotels, a convention centre, plus a varied retail and F&B offer. To match the elegant, upmarket feel of the facilities, The Circle’s F&B offer consists of high-end dining and bars, such as Babel Restaurant and Bar Iris, catering mainly to visitors looking for a destination and experience. Alternatively, Rice Up! (seen above) is a grab & go offer which caters to those on the move, including on-site workers, regular visitors from the immediate catchment and passengers looking for a quick fix before or after their travel.
Alibaba’s global headquarters, designed by Benoy and situated in Hangzhou, is home to 22,000 employees. The F&B offering here is focused entirely around serving employees, though their needs both during and after work hours are considered. The tech-embedded cafeteria, presented in a food hall style, has several stalls for employees to choose from. Once their trays are filled and brought to check-out, AI will scan the food and identify what each item is and then charge the employee accordingly. Additionally, employees can order and have groceries delivered by unmanned vehicles. Apart from Alibaba wanting to develop their AI technology, these methods promote convenience and speed, perfect for the time-pressed employee . Casual dining, fast food, bakeries, and confectionary F&B offer are dotted around the outside of the campus, ready to serve employees after work or on the weekend.
Funan Mall in Singapore is a mixed-use development comprising of commercial, office and residential units. Designed to serve each of these user groups, as well as the many cultures that reside in Singapore, the F&B offer has a mix of Asian and international brands across all categories of F&B. Famous Asian brands include Gong Cha and Old Chang Kee, whereas the international brands include McDonald's and Haagen-Dazs.
The disparate and largely confidential aims of landlords in regard to their F&B strategy and how they view success makes direct comparison difficult and largely unfair – one person’s aspirational but low sales density offer is another’s jewel in establishing a wider scheme’s positioning. What is essential is that landlord’s fully consider and prioritise the measures on which the success of their F&B will be judged, to allow for alignment of thinking, implementation and operation.
Alexander Foy