When Westfield London opened a year ago, record numbers of shoppers flooded through its doors and into its many restaurants. But with no signs of the recession easing, are the hospitality operators at the shopping centre still going strong? Kerstin Kühn reports.
Westfield London, the £1.6b retail development in London's White City, opened with a bang last October, and the run-up to Christmas saw thousands of shoppers flock through its gates. It was good news for its many retailers and hospitality operators, as fears that the credit crunch would overshadow the launch of Europe's largest inner-city shopping mall proved unfounded.
But a year on, Britain is in the grip of the longest recession on record and Westfield hasn't been left untouched. Its namesake parent company has reported annual losses of more than £1b and has put two planned developments, in Nottingham and Bradford, on hold. It insists, however, that Westfield Stratford will launch in 2011 as planned.
In the summer, the company was forced to decrease service charges after almost two dozen retailers at Westfield London disputed its high fees, with a number reportedly refusing to pay. And the continuing delay of the opening of the 14-screen cinema, a key driver of footfall, now scheduled for February 2010, has reportedly angered many of the tenants.
THE DINING SETUP
Westfield is home to nearly 50 dining outlets featuring 25 different types of cuisines and nationalities. The food offer is divided into three distinct areas: the Balcony, the Loft and the Southern Terrace.
The centre has already seen the closure of three restaurants: Tom Etridge's healthy eating concept Ito, which shut after just a few weeks; Italian restaurant group Esca, which collapsed into administration; and Swiss vegetarian concept Tibits, which shut in the summer.
But despite these casualties, things aren't as bad as one might fear, according to Tracey Mills, director of development at Davis Coffer Lyons, the sole property agent for restaurants at Westfield.
"While three restaurants have shut, all of them have been taken over and there are no vacancies on the F&B side," she told Caterer.
Pub group Geronimo Inns will open the Bull in the space of Ito later this month, while French restaurant Le Palais du Jardin is set to take over the former site of Tibits before Christmas.
"The other two vacant sites are currently under offer and we have had a fantastic amount of interest, with five operators currently bidding for the old Esca site," Mills said.
"Westfield really has matured. There were issues initially, especially with the Southern Terrace, as visitors weren't necessarily aware that there was a whole street of restaurants outside the centre, but Westfield worked really hard over the past few months to address this."
Mills added that more and more people now come to Westfield purely to eat, especially in the evenings, and that once the cinema opens in February operators will benefit even more.
This was echoed by Thomasina Miers, co-owner of Mexican group Wahaca, who launched her second restaurant on the Southern Terrace last year. "It's going really well. There aren't a lot of Mexican restaurants in the area so we're really busy," she said.
Over in the Balcony area, which overlooks the main shopping hub, there are 13 kiosk-style dining outlets including Vietnamese noodle bar Pho, Lebanese concept Comptoir Libanais, and sushi chain Yo! Sushi.
BUMPY RIDE
It is also home to a restaurant owned by Michelin-starred Club Gascon owners and former Independent Restaurateur Catey winners Pascal Aussignac and Vincent Labeyrie, who have a had a bumpy ride at Westfield.
They launched the Croque Gascon outlet, which offered speciality dishes from the South-west of France. But the concept failed to take off and after less than a year the duo relaunched it as Chip and Fish in September.
"The initial concept didn't work at Westfield," Aussignac admitted. "People don't think about eating French food when they go shopping and we needed to change the offer, so we came up with the idea of fish and chips as nobody else was doing this."
Two months on, and it is an "unbelievable success," according to Aussignac. "It's been going crazy," he said. "Customers understand the menu a lot more and we're very happy with the way it's been going."
So despite Westfield celebrating its first birthday in the midst of Britain's deepest recession, restaurants at the centre seem to be defying the economic trend. While there have been casualties, they have been relatively few and far between, and with the impending opening of the cinema, things should only get better for Westfield's hospitality operators.
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By Kerstin Kühn