The Food and Beverage category has yet to confirm growth expectations. However, despite occupying just 5% of total GLA, food court players record top business performance: a21.4% increase in 2018 vs 2017. As a comparison, fashion retailers’ business volume increased by 5.8% for the same period, but their GLA is 46%, a CBRE study shows.
“This doesn’t mean developers don’t focus on their food courts, but shopping malls need to reinvent themselves in order to accommodate more F&B, they need unique concepts to make food courts vibrant and strong, which will happen over the next years,” Luiza Moraru, Head of Asset Services at CBRE explained.
“We want to bring to all our shopping centers the third generation of food courts, and ParkLake in Bucharest is a good example. Right now we are creating some areas where potential food pop-up stores can experiment in terms of offerings, to give consumers new concepts,”Duarte Cabral, Business Development Manager at Sonae Sierra told the CEDER audience. He believes the shareable models of co-working and co-living will also impact the retail market. “We will see co-working spaces inside shopping malls, so landlords need to be flexible and understand the market trends,” Duarte said.
