Shopping centres - more food, fewer shops?
"the move by shopping centres to dramatically change their offering to customers. They shifted away from fashion retail and significantly lifted the choice of food outlets." Chanticleer - AFR
It seems that shopping centres - the big bad wolves of retail - are in trouble. Well according to the AFR anyway - which led to a discussion as to whether we should sell our shares in them. Not that we have that many. The argument is that the shops occupying the shopping centres are battling to survive in the face of competition from online shopping and therefore they cannot pay the huge sums in rent demanded by the shopping centres. Now they cannot break their contracts. They are pretty watertight, but they can go bankrupt and basically walk away, or they can wait until the end of the lease and then walk away. Or just default I suppose. Either way the shopping centres are in trouble. Well so they say,
It is interesting to ponder on this. I have lived a long time now and I have seen shopping go from the high street row of shops, each with staff who served you, to the odd supermarket and then to the shopping centre, which gradually became bigger and bigger and included cinemas and food halls, etc. As I have said elsewhere I think, France seems to have evolved differently. There the centres of the big towns are the shopping centres. They tend to be car free and are filled with, mostly boutique kind of shops and cafés, bars and restaurants. On the outskirts of town you won't find a shopping centre as here in Australia or in the UK or America, but you will find a massive hypermarket which sells literally everything, flanked by a few small shops and a couple of eating places - mostly fast food. Nearby will be another kind of centre where you will find all the DIY, furniture and other such shops - maybe an IKEA. And nowhere to eat. But they are just in a cluster, not in a shopping centre - a bit like the strips you find outside Ringwood and Nunawading in our area.
So will the shopping centre die? I tend to think not because I think they are becoming much more than a collection of shops with a convenient large car park. People meet there, they shop together and then stop for a coffee and cake in one of the multitude of places on offer, from the high end Laurent and Koko Black - shown at the top, to Subway and MacDonalds in the food hall. For there are many more options than the cheerless food hall. (Though the one in Doncaster has an amazing view over the whole of Melbourne's Eastern suburbs.) So far they don't seem to include high end restaurants - but then I guess if you have just spent a small fortune on a film you are unlikely to want to spend another small fortune on a meal afterwards - even though you would like a meal. And there aren't many tourists in Doncaster. So the restaurant offerings tend to be lower key.
But then I guess there are places like the Casino. Now is that a shopping mall?
It certainly has shops. High end ones. And restaurants too. Yes it has a food hall with fast food but it also has extremely expensive restaurants. Some of the most expensive in Melbourne. And cinemas and game arcades - so where does that fall in the shopping centre scene? And the city centres like Melbourne Central?
According to another article I read when I was talking about Swedish meatballs it is no accident that (a) IKEA has a café where you can actually get a free coffee if you are an IKEA family member (and who isn't?), (b) it is at the end of the furniture section and before you enter the maze of smaller offerings. I gather it's purpose is for you to sit and consider which bit of furniture you are going to buy and give you more energy to get through the market hall. You are probably tired after walking the miles through the furniture section and dying for something to eat and drink. If you are refreshed you might buy more.
But I am digressing a little from my aim - which was really to wonder whether the shopping centre as we know it will die completely or whether it will just evolve. We seem to like to sit in cafés and have coffee and cake with our friends. Every time I go into Eltham I am amazed at how many cafés there are and even more amazed that most of them have a fair sprinkling of customers in them too. And the same goes for the bottom end - MacDonalds as for the top - Laurent and Koko Black. And Doncaster seems to have an increasing number of food offerings from sushi to ice cream scattered throughout the centre. I'm sure it's the same in every other shopping centre.
I wonder when people started to gather together to eat and chat as they shopped? Does it go right back to the Romans or even further? We certainly saw one such place in Ostia in Rome, so very probably so. When did the pub - as we call it - begin? Some of them are very, very old and are situated in or near market places where people came to shop. Sitting down with a friend, a drink and a bite to eat is a really good way to catch up with all the latest in gossip and also in actual news, whilst also doing your shopping.
According to the AFR, the department stores - another institution supposedly on the way out - are attempting to adapt by providing food and eating options within their stores. In my youth - the heyday of department stores they all had restaurants - well they called them restaurants but they weren't that classy - they were a sort of precursor of the food hall. Mostly self-serve with laminex tables and chairs, though some of them were a bit like olde English tea rooms. In England Marks and Spencers - a sort of department store has almost become more well-known for its food than for its clothes. I remember that Myers used to have a huge food section but it disappeared long ago. The food Hall in David Jones too - but it's coming back and Neil Perry has been called up to lend his name and expertise. Classier food and classier eating but maybe there is a market for it. There certainly is for Laurent and Koko Black at Doncaster - it is rare that you can find a table free at Laurent.
Will the doomsayers who tell us that before long we shall be doing all our shopping online be right? I don't think so. Man is far too social an animal for that. Even Bunnings has a coffee shop!
