In our Property Futures report, which saw our specialists conducting literature reviews and interviews with major industry leaders along with a survey of property industry experts, we found a number of factors influencing the future of the retail market.

One of the biggest trends our experts pinpointed was the move towards restaurants and leisure facilities within the largest shopping centres. In our survey, 79% agree that the largest shopping centres could adopt a ratio of 50% eating, drinking and leisure use and 50% retail.

Growing trend

This move away from being majority retail has been happening for some years now, and shows no signs of slowing. Over the next decade, the owners of large retail centres will be forced to consider every conceivable food and leisure option as they seek to keep increasingly virtual consumers away from their laptops.

The aim is to create a ‘whole-day’ destination at retail parks, instead of a ‘pop in and shop’ attitude. This means providing something to do from morning to midnight.

Such amenities could include cinemas, aquariums and health spas while some are opting for more extreme alternatives like climbing walls and theme parks. One of the earliest examples of this was Metro Land – a theme park within the Metro Centre shopping centre outside Newcastle.

A British Council of Shopping Centres (BCSC) report, Food and beverage: A solution for shopping centres? found that in 2014, 8% of units within shopping centres were allocated to food and beverage sale. This nearly doubled to 15% in the largest centres.

And many centres are now starting to see the positive impact such facilities can have on footfall. Night time footfall at shopping centres has increased in recent years, according to BSCS figures, while research from CACI shows those eating at shopping centres are likely to spend 50% more than those who aren’t.

Food or fun?

The comments in our Property Futures report suggest that food and beverage will play a bigger part than leisure.

Research from shopping centre firm, ECE, back this up – it found that 40% of visitors choose their shopping destination based on the available dining options.

But whether developers and owners opt for leisure facilities or food and drink as the main attraction outside of shopping, they need to be sure these offerings actually act as a consistent driver of footfall.

The BCSC report says that adding these without any kind of coherent strategy could lead to a less than optimal offer that could in fact distract consumers and reduce the amount of time spent shopping overall.

What next?

While many new centres are already incorporating these provisions into the designs, older centres will need to consider how they can add leisure and food and beverage options into the current structures in a way that feels natural and drives footfall and purchases throughout the centre.

This will lead to the redesign of some centres along with the extension of operating hours for retailers to match those of amenities like cinemas and restaurants.