In 2010, the chef Todd English opened an indoor market in the basement of the Plaza Hotel, in Manhattan. Back then, the term “food hall” was still largely alien to many Americans. It belonged to Britain, to describe the section of a department store where one might buy tins of loose-leaf tea and Christmas hampers, or pause for a glass of champagne. Todd English’s version stuck close to that mold, mirroring “the aesthetics of the finest food-specialty markets throughout the world,” and it was an overwhelming success. In its wake, the American food hall flourished, and took on a life of its own. Some included butcher shops, or bakeries, or kitchen-supply stores. Others focussed solely on prepared food, such as bánh-mì sandwiches or tacos, served over the counter by local venders. A dominant aesthetic emerged: exposed ductwork, cement floors, subway tile, and long, wooden communal dining tables. Anachronisms like New York City’s Chelsea Market and San Francisco’s Ferry Building, once called “marketplaces,” were duly rechristened. In 2010, there were a couple dozen spaces that fit the definition in the United States. Garrick Brown, who studies the topic for the real-estate-services company Cushman & Wakefield, anticipates that there will be three hundred by the end of next year. In Manhattan alone there are now at least sixteen food halls, with many more in planning or construction. A project by Anthony Bourdain, in the meatpacking district, intends to cover a hundred and fifty-five thousand square feet, nearly the size of three football fields.
In contrast to the food court, with its Auntie Anne’s and Panda Express, the food hall eschews big chains in favor of local, artisanal purveyors, dazzling the visitor with a vision of a thriving economy of small businesses operating side by side. It is tempting, therefore, to see the proliferation of the food hall as a victory for the little guy. This is not entirely accurate. Much of the current expansion is driven by property developers grasping for ways to reinvigorate moribund shopping centers, or to gin up interest in new developments. Traditional retail is waning; millennial consumers, the marketing consensus tells us, aren’t interested in “stuff” so much as in experiences—as well as choice, convenience, “authenticity,” and things that make good photographs. You can see where the food halls come in. The markets themselves can provide landlords a healthy income, but, to those looking to offload high-rise apartments or office space, they offer prospective tenants something even more stirring: an amenity. Drop a food hall into the mix, and the whole development basks in the soft, Edison-bulb glow of the small food businesses inhabiting its ground floor, luring tenants with the siren song of pour-over coffee and craft beer.
Gotham West, a luxury apartment complex on Manhattan’s far west side, was among the first to cotton on to the idea, in 2013. A developer like Gotham can offer a persuasive pitch to chefs struggling to raise enough money to open a stand-alone shop: minimal startup expenses, short-term leases, and rents that, while expensive on a square-foot metric, come in well below the total cost of a larger conventional restaurant space. What’s more, the food-hall developer provides marketing and handles hassles like wiping down tables, washing plates, and paying the gas bill. Think WeWork, but for restaurants.
Of more than a dozen current and former tenants I’ve spoken to, however, many have discovered that food halls are not the artisanal promised lands they seem to be. Caroline Fidanza, who owns the popular Brooklyn sandwich shop Saltie, says a broker approached her about joining Gotham West Market as it was assembling its initial roster of venders, in 2012. “It was one of those deals that seemed kind of good on paper,” she told me. Gotham would cover the cost of building out a market stall, including kitchen facilities; all she had to do was show up. Oddly, though, Gotham asked Fidanza not to sell her famously delicious sandwiches; the market had already signed up another Brooklyn-based sandwich-maker, Court Street Grocers. Fidanza settled on doing soup and hearty salads, under the moniker Little Chef, but the food didn’t catch on with marketgoers. There were unexpected charges for dishwashers and staff to receive deliveries. According to Fidanza, an anticipated license to sell wine and beer never materialized. (Gotham denies that it indicated that a license would be available in the first place.) Although Little Chef was doing almost all of its sales around lunchtime, Fidanza’s contract with Gotham required her to stay open for eight consecutive hours each day, in order to give the market a vibrant appearance. Fidanza was also frustrated by the market stall’s generic aesthetic; it felt disconnected from the distinctive look and feel of her thriving business in Williamsburg. After four months, she closed down. “It was absolutely soul-crushing,” Fidanza said. “It was the saddest four months of my life.”
The co-owner of Court Street Grocers, Eric Finkelstein, told me that he missed the sense of individuality and autonomy that comes from owning a stand-alone food business. His stall, he said, was “looked at not as a restaurant or a sandwich shop but as an amenity.” Court Street eventually left Gotham West, owing to lacklustre sales; so did the soup company Indie Fresh. The Black Jet Baking Company, which had a small kiosk in San Francisco’s Ferry Building, left because of the cost and complexity of baking things in one place and selling them in another. Food halls do tend to attract solid foot traffic, but several venders mentioned to me that visitors seem to come primed for small purchases, like a coffee or a sandwich, which makes survival difficult if you’re a butcher or a cheesemonger. Alexandra Saunders, whose high-end chocolate company, Nuubia, leased a space in the food hall occupying the ground floor of the Twitter building, in San Francisco, said that her average sale there was six dollars, less than ten per cent of what she makes for an average sale at the company’s other retail location. She ended up leaving, losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in startup costs.
“It works for some things and it doesn’t for others,” the chef Akhtar Nawab, who has run businesses in four different food halls, told me. “There’s this guy that makes these custom baby doughnuts in Chelsea Market. That’s not a bad idea for a food hall. It’s got to be very catchy, it has to be very simple, something that people are going to walk around the market with and people are going to say, ‘Hey, where’d you get that?’ ” On-site cooking facilities are often limited, so it helps to be selling something that doesn’t require a stove. Thus sushi, rewarmed empanadas, poke bowls, cold-pressed juice, and oyster bars have become ubiquitous. Will Donaldson opened St. Roch Market, in New Orleans, in 2015, and is planning to open sister markets in several additional cities, beginning with Miami. He told me that he advises his venders on how to design simple, catchy concepts that are likely to appeal to the food-hall visitor, and makes a point of working with local upstarts over established brands. But another forthcoming food hall, inside Miami’s Aventura Mall, will include an outpost of the burger chain Shake Shack. “You can backslide into food-court territory really quickly,” Donaldson said. “And I see a lot of food halls all over the country that are doing that.”
Other developers are finding more creative solutions. Three years ago, a real-estate investor named Craig Young bought an abandoned billiards hall in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district with plans to build a thirteen-story apartment tower on the site. While waiting for permits to come through, Young constructed a temporary food hall, called the Hall, to help build interest in the neighborhood. Young told me that despite the city’s exceptionally strong food community, it was nearly impossible to find good venders able to operate successfully in the space, and that the amount of day-to-day management, hand-holding, and negotiating among them was untenable. “When you walk in and see a fully occupied food hall, on the surface, everything looks great,” he said. “When you open up the hood,” he added, venders are struggling to make ends meet.” Young concluded that there were easier ways to bring foot traffic to the area. Recently, he stripped the Hall of all its venders, leaving only a bar, whitewashed walls, and cans of paint. The idea is for customers to come in and express themselves creatively over a beer. “We believe this to be the front end of the next big trend that retail is going to see, and that’s going to be experiential retail,” Young said. “People just want something Instagram-worthy.”
