When Roger Wade decided to assemble a shopping mall made from 60 old shipping containers on a derelict site in Shoreditch almost a decade and a half ago, few could have imagined that it would start a trend for a new style of eating and drinking location that would occupy and rejuvenate disused venues the length and breadth of the country. In the majority of cases, Boxpark’s blueprint, combining food and drink, fashion, arts and lifestyle brands, made way for a more food and drink focused offer, with brands that were to follow in its wake, most notably Mercato Metropolitano and Market Halls, opting to become food and drink hubs.
Today, the UK’s food hall sector has swelled, with numerous players having become established over the past five years. Led by an influx in sites having become available due to victims of the credit crunch and the rise in online shopping - Escape to Freight Island’s new Newcastle venue will be located in a former Debenhams department store, Market Halls’ Oxford Street site was an old BHS store - and increases in rents that encouraged smaller operators to look for cheaper options, the food hall sector has become big business and now employs a significant number of people.
The sector has also helped create and nurture many street food brands, enabling them to open more permanent sites or push into new markets. Brands including Black Bear Burger, 20ft Fried Chicken, Club Mexicana, Yum Bun, Roti King, Gopal’s Corner, Honest Crust Pizza, Tender Cow, and Manna started (and sometimes have remained) within food halls or have expanded as a result of their presence in them and many owe their success to being able to become established with significantly smaller start-up costs than those required to open a bricks and mortar restaurant.
Not every food hall or street food collective has stood the test of time - some blazed a trail, such as street food market Dinerama in Shoreditch only to close over failing to reach an agreement with the landlord, and others have opened and closed venues - such as Market Halls’ Fulham site, and Mercato Metropolitano in Ilford. However, in general the market seems resilient, with many of the major players having announced expansion plans.
So, how has the food hall sector evolved, who are the main players, and how does the food hall market stack up? Listed below are the sector’s main protagonists, with details on when they were established, their sizes and any future plans they might have. In the interest of brevity, we’ve not included those food halls that currently only operate one site and are yet to release plans of any further openings, although we acknowledge that food halls such as Bang Bang Oriental Foodhall, the largest Asian food court in London, and Hello Oriental in Manchester, are significant players in their local markets.
STACK
Founded: 2018
Number of sites: 14
Describing itself as operating leisure and social hubs, STACK has a presence across the north of the country with locations in Lincoln, Newcastle, Seaburn, and Middlesbrough. The brand, which is owned by Danieli Group, will soon make its Midlands debut with a site in Northampton that is being supported by West Northamptonshire Council, which is providing up to £4.2m investment, with a further £8m investment from STACK, and also has ambitious plans to open in cities including Bishop Auckland, Leeds, Carlisle, Durham, Manchester, Wigan, Whitley Bay, and Sheffield. STACK was founded by Neill Winch in 2017, and initially made its mark with its Newcastle site, which opened in 2018, and which attracted more than three million visitors before its closure in 2022. The company has since returned to the city with St. James’ STACK, presented by Sela - a 2,000-capacity fan zone and leisure destination located beneath the Gallowgate End of Newcastle’s football club, St. James’ Park. The project was initially granted a three-year planning permission in 2023 before officially opening in 2024 but in June 2025 received the green light to remain on the site until 2031. STACK also hopes to open a more permanent venue in Newcastle in the future.
Boxpark
Founded: 2011
Number of sites: 6
Boxpark opened what it says was the world’s first pop-up shopping mall in Shoreditch back in 2011 and has since grown its estate of parks to include Camden, Wembley and Croydon in the capital, as well as Liverpool. More recently it debuted its new Boxhall brand, which launched in London in April this year. Described as an all-day social dining experience including food, drink and events and located at the historic Metropolitan Arcade building close to Liverpool Street station, the 17,000sq ft Boxhall site has 16 kitchen units and was initially due to open in 2023. The company was also due to open a Boxhall in Bristol in 2023 and that has also been delayed, although work at the site is believed to be progressing. The future of its original Shoreditch site had been in doubt after the landlord announced its intention to trigger a break clause in the lease, but Boxpark has since secured a short-term period to continue trading there and in March welcomed five new food operators. There are signs that there is more to come from the company, which has made a number of key appointments this year. In March former Gusto Italian CEO Matt Snell was named as its new CEO, followed by the appointment in May of Michelle Farrell as its first chief growth officer as it looks to accelerate growth and expand its UK estate.
Market Halls
Founded: 2018
Number of sites: 5
Market Halls was at the vanguard of the London food hall movement when it opened its first site in Fulham, which has since closed. The company, which has helped nurture brands including Roti King, with its Gopal’s Corner offshoot, and Black Bear Burger and its 20 Ft Fried Chicken sister brand, now operates sites in Victoria, Oxford Street, and Canary Wharf as well as Paddington, its most recent project that opened earlier this year. In 2023 the company, which is backed by investment firm Gees Court Partners, reported revenue growth of 155% from £8.6m to £22m and said it wanted to open two to three venues per year over the next five years in cities including Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, Leeds, Cardiff, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh. These are yet to materialise, but Market Halls now has a single regional site following the purchase of Brighton-based food hall Shelter Hall from its founder Sessions earlier this year.
Market Place
Founded: 2020
Number of sites: 4
With sites in Peckham, Harrow, Vauxhall and St Paul’s, the latter opening in May this year, Market Place has targeted less obvious areas to grow its food hall estate. Its sites range in size, with Vauxhall home to 12 food vendors while the other venues have space for nine food operators each. Future growth is on the cards. The company has plans to open a fifth London site on Baker Street and also has its eyes on national growth with a site in Manchester on the cards. Opening in the Ryland’s building (the former home of Debenhams) in Manchester in late 2026, the 14,200sq ft single floor site will be the biggest in the group’s estate and its first outside the capital. The group is also looking further afield and is exploring entering the Middle East alongside other international opportunities and recently engaged Dubai-based strategic advisor David Singleton to support its global growth strategy.
Mercato Metropolitano
Founded: 2015 (launched in London: 2016)
Number of sites: 3 (UK)
Mercato Metropolitano has one of the UK’s most striking food halls, with its second London venue Mercato Mayfair situated within the deconsecrated St Mark’s church on North Audley Street. The two-storey venue is home to food vendors including Pad Thai House, Pizzeria Napoletana, Club Mexicana and Steamy & Co and followed on from the original location in Elephant and Castle, which opened in 2016. However, the original site is not long for this world; it is due to close and be bulldozed to make room for a set of skyscrapers. In July 2024 the company opened Mercato Metropolitano in Ilford four years after plans for it were first announced but it closed in January 2025 just six months later. It also operated a site under its neighbourhood MMy brand at Elephant Park (also now closed). The company does still have one MMy venue, in Wood Wharf, which opened in 2021.
Blend Family
Founded: 2018
Number of sites: 3
Blend Family is responsible for the regeneration of Sheffield’s Kelham Island area when it turned a run-down former cutlery factory into popular food hall Cutlery Works and opened food hall Cambridge Street Collective in Sheffield town centre. Since then, owners Matt and Nina Bigland have gone on to open Kargo MKT in Salford, Manchester, serving dishes from around the world from 19 independent kitchens, and they are soon to make their London debut with Tower Bridge Collective this summer, a 16,000sq ft food hall that brings together 13 globally inspired food partners in Tower Bridge. The Biglands have a strong community focus and have also built sustainability into their business model - the Tower Bridge food hall will be located on the ground floor of a net zero carbon development by FORE and run entirely on 100% electric energy and it also operates the Blend Culinary Foundation, which runs numerous cooking clubs and events with all the proceeds reinvested to support its mission of alleviating food poverty, enhancing food education, and uniting communities through food.
Market Operations
Founded: 2014
Number of sites: 3
Nick Johnson and partner Jen Thompson are widely credited with pioneering the modern wave of food halls in the UK having transformed Altrincham Market into a vibrant food hall more than a decade ago. Altrincham Market has a covered market that hosts regional food producers, vintage fashion and furniture as well as Altrincham Market House, which is home to a range of independent food operators including Honest Crust Pizza, Pico’s Tacos, Rubens Mezze Grill,and Tender Cow, all of which also have a presence at its sister venue Mackie Mayor in Manchester. Market Operations also operates Picturedrome in Macclesfield, which houses nine kitchens. Operators include Good Burger, Baked by Bean, and Send Noods.
Arcade
Founded: 2021
Number of sites: 2
Starting life as Arcade Food Theatre when it launched in the Centre Point building on Tottenham Court Road in 2019, it was relaunched as Arcade Food Hall by JKS Restaurants in November 2021 following the Covid pandemic. Food options at the venue include Thai restaurant Plaza Khao Gaeng, located on the mezzanine-level, as well as Levantine offer Shatta & Toum from the founder of Berenjak; smash burger brand Manna; and north Indian concept Hero. A second Arcade Food Hall opened in Battersea Power Station in August 2023 and once again features a JKS-run restaurant, this time Bao. The 500-cover venue has 13 street vendors, many of which are the same as at Centre Point. Also at Battersea during the summer months is ArcadeX, offering food, drink and DJ sets at the site’s Coaling Jetty. When Arcade Food Hall launched JKS was front and centre but its relationship with Arcade has changed. Arcade is now run as a separate entity led by Cokey Sulkin, the co-founder and non-executive director of New York-inspired restaurant group Dirty Bones, and his business partner, Dipak Panchal with JKS partnering with them to help develop the food brands.
Heist/The Ghost at The Feast
Founded: 2021
Number of sites: 2
Former journalists turned restaurateurs Ben and Kate O’Norum now operate two food halls on the south coast with a site in Chichester adding to their existing operation in St Leonards, a small town and seaside resort in the borough of Hastings in East Sussex. Operating under completely different names, Heist opened in 2021 and was followed by The Ghost at The Feast (a name that references Macbeth but also the notion that the restaurant industry is broken, according to Ben) that opened at the start of the year. The O’Norum’s approach at both venues is to have space for vendors but also run their own restaurants - Boatyard Fish and Wine Bar at Heist and Farmyard at The Ghost at The Feast. The Chichester venue is also home to a small winery run by Kate.
KERB
Founded: 2012
Number of sites: 2 (UK)
KERB is one of the capital’s biggest success stories in the street food sector and has been responsible for the growth of many food vendors over the past decade. The company was founded by Petra Barran as a pop-up market on a Kings Cross building site in 2012 and has since gone on to operate several street food markets as well as food halls in London and beyond. In the capital it operates Seven Dials Market, which it opened in 2019, and more recently Corner Corner, a food hall located in Canada Water, and through its KERB Events arm, its traders appear at venues across the country. Its latest project is KERB Social Club, a US-style sports bar that will open in London’s Spitalfields Market this August. Blending a retro-inspired design with entertainment such as Super Bowl parties, games consoles, karaoke booths, pool tables and darts, it will house three of KERB’s staple street food traders - fried chicken brand Only Jerkin’, hot dog vendor Oh My Dog, and Detroit-style pizza player Cutie Pies. The business is also now global, with its 23,000sq ft plant-forward food hall Saluhall in San Francisco, which it opened in partnership with Ingka Centres, the real estate sister company to IKEA, and KERB Berlin. The company’s InKERBator programme helps street food start-ups become established with face-to-face workshops and real market trading.
Mare Street Market
Founded: 2018
Number of sites: 2
Launched in Hackney in 2018 by Barworks founder Marc Francis-Baum, Mare Street Market doubled up in 2023 with a site in King’s Cross (also called Mare Street Market). On Lewis Cubitt Square, adjacent to Coal Drops Yard, the latter has 70% more space than the East London original. “Our mission is to help new businesses on their journey to success, and in turn they help us provide a unique place and offer,” Francis-Baum says. “Many of these businesses opened their first physical unit in our Hackney site and have now gone on to have their own shops and places.” Earlier this summer it was announced that high-profile chefs Brad Carter and Tom Brown will join forces to launch a restaurant at Mare Street Market King’s Cross. Opening this month, Island is Inspired by the friends’ shared memories of years of cooking together around the world and is described as an ‘easy-going, refined celebration of meat and seafood, rooted in the produce of the British Isles’.
Escape to Freight Island
Founded: 2020
Number of sites: 1
Food, drink, and entertainment venue Freight Island proved an instant hit when it opened in Manchester’s Depot Mayfield in the summer of 2020. The space was a collaboration between festival, food and hospitality experts including Jon Drape of Engine no 4; Justin Crawford and Luke Cowdrey of Volta, Electrik Bar and The Refuge; Gareth Cooper of Festival N°6 and Dan Morris, the man behind Manchester music venues Gorilla and the Albert Hall and the 5,000sq ft venue with its 3,000 capacity became a blueprint for more experience-led food halls to open up across the country. Five years on and the brand is looking to finally spread its wings with plans underway to turn the top floor of the former Debenhams department store in Newcastle’s Eldon Square into a second venue. Inspired by the likes of Coney Island in New York and Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen, the new £16m space will span 60,000sq feet and will offer a mix of experiences, including global street food, a food hall with communal seating under a retractable roof, family-friendly events, DJ sets, and live performances. “Newcastle is the perfect location to take Freight Island to the next level,” Morris says. “The city is growing rapidly, and Freight Island will play an important part in that by nurturing local talent, whilst bringing our vibrant mix of food, drink, music, and entertainment to this incredible city.”
Society
Founded: 2021
Number of sites: 1
Founded in Manchester in 2021 by Nick Gregory and Richard Sweet, Society will soon double up with a second site in Birmingham opening in September. The original is home to five independently owned kitchens, a cocktail bar and taproom by craft brewery Vocation and the Birmingham venue will be of a similar size and be home to one of the largest selection of beer in the city with 36 lines of craft beer sourced from breweries locally and across the world. Both the Manchester and Birmingham Society sites are owned by Oval Real Estate, which was founded in 2013 by Nick Prior and James Craig. With offices in London and Birmingham, Oval invests in building, redeveloping and managing buildings that have been ‘overlooked’.