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Shopping centres luring customers with food rather than fashion, says Neil Perry

Major shopping centre developers are prioritising food before iconic fashion brands, claimed Australian celebrity chef Neil Perry.

Speaking at Mumbrella’s Entertainment Marketing Summit, Perry explained that shopping centres are reaching out to food companies such as The Rockpool Group to attract customers to the retail centres by creating “dining precincts”.

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Perry: “For developers like Westfield, AMP and Chadstone, food is the new black”

“For the big developers like Westfield, AMP and Chadstone, food is the new black,” Perry said.

“They recognise that people will come to eat before they come to shop but they’ll stay to shop.”

The Australian chef and director of Rockpool Group, said the shift was a big change for developers because, traditionally, iconic fashion labels would be used to attract customers.

“Once upon a time they built the walls around fashion icons like H&M, Uniqlo and other premium brands. Now they are finding that they not only need food courts, which was the old way of doing it, but they need a dining precinct,” he said.

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“They are actively engaging, building and designing their centres to take dining to the streets outside, so they can extend the operating hours of their centres, so it’s really had a massive change.”

Perry attributed the change to shifting food trends in the local market.

“It’s the rise of the fast casual – making affordable eating; and many of them, like The Burger Project (also owned by Neil Perry), have a providence promise attached to it,”

Andrew McEvoy, managing director, life media events at Fairfax Media, said food experiences were an untapped marketing opportunity for brands.

Andrew McEvoy

Andrew McEvoy, managing director, life media events at Fairfax Media

“There is less demand for print advertising and it’s being replaced, to a large extent, by digital. More and more clients and brands want to be associated with things people love and they want to demonstrate their brand,” McEvoy said.

“We have a lot of partners like Mercedes, Citibank, Harvey Norman, who want to physically turn up and be part of that person’s experience and demonstrate their product directly.

“We are seeing a rapid rise of people who want to do content around that but also physically demonstrate their product in awesome environments where consumers are having a great time.”

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