Foodservice and retail have long been a match made in heaven. Neiman Marcus owns 40 restaurants and cafés, Restoration Hardware boasts over 20, and Gucci features four “osterias” with Massimo Battura– to name a few. The rapid decline of large shopping malls and department stores are causing developers and brands to convert distressed assets into new multi-purpose spaces with food as a key driver. In the 1980s there were ~ 2,500 American shopping malls, and today, just around 700. Meanwhile, food “away from home” has eclipsed at-home grocery spend in recent years fueled by inflation and a post-pandemic industry recovery. Citing “urbanization trends, changing customer behavior and the digitization of retail,” IKEA acquired and redeveloped a distressed mall in the Hammersmith district of London for £170m in 2020. The Hammersmith store is a departure from its larger suburban footprints, occupying a quarter of the space and featuring amenities like a gym, food hall, and hourly pop-up spaces that have helped traffic double over the past two years. That same year, the group bought struggling 6X6 mall in SoMa, San Francisco and invested a combined $260mm on the acquisition and renovation that includes a coworking space and a food hall. This past weekend, HNGRY paid a visit to the newly-opened Saluhall (“market hall” in Swedish) to analyze how the experiment is going.