Big Mamma Group considers London food market
BigHospitality's sister site MCA reports that the France-founded group is looking to add one further restaurant in the early part of next year, before exploring a 2,000-4,000 sq m food market in the capital.
La Felicità is described as one of the largest restaurants in Europe, at 4,500 sq m, but operates more like a food hall, with Big Mamma creating and operating a number of individual food stations.
It includes a trattoria serving fresh pasta and antipasti, a focaccia bakery, a seafood bar, a Napolistyle café, a barbecue grill, a burger pop-up, a wood-fired pizza oven, and a cocktail bar.
It also features a range of cultural activities including DJ sets, live concerts, art exhibition, street art, summer festivals, film screenings and World cup football showings.
Big Mamma director of development Jack de Wet, speaking at the Global Resturant Investment Forum (GRIF), said: “We set out with the theory of multiplicity - creating restaurants that aren’t single format, but do have a single offer of Italian.
“We have restaurants ranging from 40 covers through to a 1000 cover food market, which we run exclusively.
“Within our group we have nine different concepts, and we see opportunities away from a formula, which don’t necessarily have brand guidelines or principles. It makes it infinitely more complicated for us - but we seem to enjoy the pain!”
Big Mamma, which has seven trattoria-style restaurants and bars in Paris and another in Lille, debuted in the UK last year with Gloria, in the former Red’s True Barbecue site in Shoreditch, followed by Circolo Popolare in the Rathbone Square scheme in Fitzrovia.
This article originally appeared on BigHospitality's sister site MCA. For more information or to subscribe click here.
