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Another flagship food hall has gone into liquidation this week – Farmer’s City Market in Richmond. This is concerning for the industry as I know there are other embryonic plans in the industry based on its perceived success. This latest set-back follows the failure of Food Inc in Bayswater at the beginning of the year and the well-documented struggles of Wholefoods Market in Kensington who continue to announce large losses.

In British Food Fortnight, what is the future for urban food halls concentrating on selling British produce to the British public? I am particularly keen to find out the answer to this question as I have lost £15,000 in bad debts to the two outlets named above in this calendar year. I am wondering whether we should continue to offer credit accounts to these potentially large customers. This week I would really value some thoughts on why places like this aren’t prospering as the rest of the industry seems to be. I was at a well-known farm shop in the North of England yesterday, who is reporting year on year growth of around 15%. Our turnover as a wholesaler is projected to be around the same for this financial year – and this is largely due to farm shops buying more from us. Regular readers of this blog will know that we celebrated our 10th anniversary earlier this year by inviting our top 50 customers. The vast majority were farm shops, not urban food halls. (more…)

Labels: food halls, markets