For the love of food

It aims to introduce a new food culture into ECE’s shopping centres with the creation of unique restaurant zones and food courts that are well designed, include interesting and high-quality food concepts and offer great service. The campaign is wide ranging and also includes a blog, the use of social media (such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram), marketing, events to promote the idea of tasty meals in exceptional places.

Design counts...

Under the ‘We Love Food’ programme the appearance of food and beverage areas in retail centres is of great importance. Research shows that nearly 40 pct customers consider the restaurants when choosing which shopping centre to go to. Such areas must therefore be attractive not only in their diversity and the quality of their food but also in the way they look. Restaurants should attract people to the centre encouraging them to enter rather than be just an addition to the tenant mix. This makes it all the more important for food and beverage tenants to improve their services, to introduce more varied menus, to open up to the customer and to create new ways of dining. As a result shopping centre operators need to meet the expectations of both tenants and customers by finding the right place to serve food and by arranging its layout correctly. In Poland, ECE is rebuilding the food and beverage area in its Galeria Łódzka mall with the work to be completed this year. In The Silesia City Center shopping centre the foodcourt has already been rebranded with a new look as the Tygiel Smaków area and more such projects are under development.

... and so does the food range

Due to the growing importance of the food and beverage sector in ECE centres, more and more space is being assigned to the food court. In the shopping centres that the company has most recently opened around 10 pct on average of the retail space is taken up by food and beverage tenants while the average so far has been only 6 pct. ECE is also concentrating more on food diversity and has introduced vegetarian and vegan options as well as international cuisine. As well as large chains, the centres increasingly offer also slow food concepts, restaurants with waiter service, bars and other catering options.

The man for the job

Since 2017 Jonathan Doughty has been global head of foodservice at ECE. His role is to promote the concept of the ‘third place’, which is somewhere people can go that is not their workplace or their home. He uses his knowledge and experience in the area of foodservice as well as his love for food to create a place for food in shopping centres. He presents various ideas for arranging food and beverage zones and bringing in interesting concepts. The concepts that Jonathan Doughty’s team creates and realizes include the new food area Foodsky in the Europa Passage in Hamburg and the food and entertainment concept Foodtopia in the MyZeil shopping centre in Frankfurt. In addition and to further strengthen the idea of placemaking, ECE has decided to put additional focus on leisure and entertainment concepts. In this context, Jonathan Doughty is now also responsible for leisure and placemaking which includes the planning and integration of non-retail activities across the ECE portfolio such as sports, leisure and entertainment activities, cinemas, bowling centers, climbing walls, sports locations etc. which will provide an even more attractive entertainment offer and contribute to further establishing ECE shopping centers as places for shopping, dining and leisure. Jonathan Doughty follows the principle of the “3 Es” meaning the introduction of “emotion, excitement and entertainment” to shopping centres. ν