Report
Street I
Street food has taken the UK by storm over the past couple of years. Glynn Davis discovers how it is bringing new energy to the UK’s largest retail destinations
n early 2009 when an old van was converted into a travelling kitchen and it pitched up in various London car parks selling high-quality burgers under the name of ‘Meatwagon’, it lit the touchpaper for the UK’s street food revolution.
Today there are a growing number of chefs and amateur cooks – along with some well-recognised restaurant brands – who have followed in its wake and are using their trucks to sell an ever-broader range of innovative and exciting foods
for a young and hungry clientele to eat on the hoof.
This appetite for converting trucks and vans into kitchens and appearing in diff erent locations throughout the week follows the trend fi rst seen in the US where street food has become a feature in many cities.
Trinity Leeds, Land Securities’ next big retail destination, demonstrates the importance of this growing trend and the resilience of the food and beverage sector. One of the scheme’s brand pillars is around food, and the development team have been keen to explore ideas for food that are more about creating talkability and a social scene than just buying products. Looking at the revolution of street food, and forging a partnership with the British Street Food Awards has allowed the team to gain a greater insight into how this vibrant street scene is aff ecting the way consumers are buying and spending time with food.
This insight combined with his own experience of the high-octane fl avours delivered from the mobile kitchens on the west coast of the US led Andrew Turf,
manager at Land Securities,
food and beverage leasing to seize on the
opportunity to bring some of this excitement into its shopping centres.
“I’m from Chicago and had previously worked in Los Angeles where I experienced the street food culture and vibe. It started there with the
16 autumn 2012
style
likes of Kobe beef burgers. I wanted to bring it to our [shopping centre] sites in the UK where we’ve seen street food grow like crazy in recent years,” he says. Marrying street food vendors with large shopping centre sites certainly moves the food experience in many centres a signifi cant step further on. To help Turf realise his objective of hosting a street food festival, Richard Johnson, organiser of the British Street Food Awards, worked with him to bring 11 street food trucks to the Quakers Friars outdoor space at Bristol’s Cabot Circus shopping centre from May 18 to 20, 2012.
Johnson suggests that street food makes exciting dining aff ordable and Turf agrees wholeheartedly, saying it creates a buzz wherever it goes: “It’s not just diff erent, it is also aff ordable, interesting, eclectic, and is more vibrant – attracting 18-to-34-year-olds who bring more energy with them.”
The potential to bring in diff erent food trucks to specifi c centres on a Friday and Saturday to provide a diff ering proposition to that available from the regular in-centre restaurants can enhance the overall off er. And the more success the street food operators have then the more exposure the retailers and other tenants will ultimately enjoy.
The food on off er from the trucks that pitched up at Quakers Friars in May were a broad mix of operators,
including The Hungry Gecko
vegetarian Asian street food from MasterChef 2011 fi nalist Jackie Kearney; Big Apple Hot Dogs –
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