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Stephen Wall's restaurant chain, Pho, is the type of renter that shopping center owners would like to attract. The Vietnamese menu is fashionable, the business is growing and, better still, the network has always been successful in shopping malls.
However, he does not think even restaurants like his will be able to save malls, which are suffering from the rise of Internet retail sales and cell phone addiction.
"Food is not the solution for most homeowners." The saturation is due to the too many restaurants located in shopping malls, "said Wall, founder of the British network with his wife Jules, in 2005. "Operators are wary".
With the intensification of competition from companies like Amazon and Asos, British shopping center owners have resorted to food to retain their relevance. People went out to eat, bought clothes in the shops, and the extra fees allowed the owners to increase their rents. Instead, food and beverage operators have been hampered over the past 12 months by a combination of rapid expansion and deceleration in consumer spending. A series of private equity investments in restaurants has led some networks to open many unprofitable establishments. Famous names such as Gourmet Burger Kitchen, the Carluccio pasta restaurant and the Jamie Oliver network, often found in major malls such as Westfield and Bluewater in London or the Trafford Center in Manchester, are among the underprivileged. Across the country, the number of restaurants becoming insolvent has increased 24% over 2017.
The combination of increased competition and an increase in food costs due The weakness of the pound sterling following the Brexit referendum and a government tax on the recruitment of apprentices have hurt operators. Many brands are also very similar and consumers are only able to differentiate them by price, according to James Child, a retail badyst at EG.
One of the main problems is that shopping malls compete for restaurants against central regions, which offer many more attractions. In the West End of London, the establishments feed locals in the area for work, theater, shopping or just for a walk, says Brian Bickell, CEO of Shaftesbury, who recently rented a former retail center in Covent Garden District In 1965, shopping centers offered a much larger capacity than demand, according to Ewan Venters, CEO of Fortnum & Mason, an upscale retailer who recently opened a food court on the Royal Exchange. a small luxury shopping center in front of the Bank of England.
"The whole economy of the experience has come in. You are not just trying to sell to people, you are trying to entertain them," Venters said. "Everything happened very quickly in the shopping centers and suddenly there was overcapacity and there were not enough people to have breakfast, lunch and dinner in these huge places." No wonder they are retiring now. "
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