Chadstone’s ambitious Market Pavilion food precinct prepares for opening
The nation’s largest shopping centre is preparing to open its new fresh food mecca, The Market Pavilion, featuring gourmet retail brands and a world-first food concierge service.
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Chadstone shopping centre, the nation’s largest mall, is preparing to open its new fresh food mecca, The Market Pavilion, next month, adding more than 50 food specialists and a world-first food concierge service along with personalised shopping experiences and menu planning ideas generated by AI.
A curated selection of fresh food and dining vendors will take a space in the Market Pavilion, including notable food retailers Brunetti Oro, Hank’s Bagelry, Hey Tea, Koko Black, Little Sister Bakery, Vic’s Meats and Vintage Cellars.
Beefing up its foodie credentials to match its historic moniker as ‘the fashion capital’, the new 26,500sq m Market Pavilion will cater for everyday grocery needs to gourmet meals, while delivering on the ambition of its joint owners – the ASX-listed Vicinity Centres and billionaire John Gandel – to rethink Chadstone as not just a traditional mall but an “emerging city” in its own right.
This emerging city on Melbourne’s southeast is quickly becoming a reality – the shopping centre’s office towers and hive of meeting rooms host 3900 office workers, while a new nine-storey office tower atop Chadstone’s Market Pavilion is set to welcome more than 2000 more across a total 50,000sq m of commercial office space.
“We know there is significant appetite for workplace solutions outside of the traditional CBD, and this significant investment in the centre’s development recognises the important role Chadstone plays at the heart of an emerging 20-minute city in Melbourne’s southeast,” said Chadstone centre manager Daniel Boyle.
That new office tower is more than 95 per cent leased and will soon be the headquarters for retailers Kmart and Adairs, adding to the thousands of hungry workers based at Chadstone who will be looking for a bite to eat at lunch or after work. The centre’s owners hope those workers will increasingly turn to the Market Pavilion foodie hall. In their favour is data that shows more workers are heading to the office in Melbourne’s suburban areas, like Chadstone, while the CBD continues to record higher rates of staff working from home.
More than three years in the planning process, Market Pavilion will open on March 27 and Mr Boyle told The Australian the landlord wasn’t concerned that the new development – flush with premium food offerings – would be coming online just as the cost-of-living crisis was pinching consumer spending on dining out and gourmet experiences.
“This project has been in the works for many years, and we are obviously thrilled to be bringing it to life on the 27th of March,” he said.
“One of the greatest things about this new development that we know our customers will love is that there really is something for everyone. So you’ve got an offer, a depth of offer really from the everyday needs right through to those gourmet events and a customer that’s looking for a budget shop that wants to visit an Aldi or a Bakers Delight or a Little Sister bakery – they’ll have that option.
“But if they really like to plan something special and grab the best meat from Vic’s, The Chef’s Butcher, it offers something for everyone. So regardless of cost-of-living pressures, people need to eat and this is the place that we know they kind of want to come and do that.”
The Market Pavilion will feature low-cost food chains such as Aldi, Bakers Delight and Sushi Sushi as well as a portfolio of more upper-end, or premium, gourmet retail brands like French bakery Laurent, boutique wine shop Boutique Le Vin and Champagne & Oyster Bar.
The Market Pavilion is expected to cost between $270m and $290m and will add further value to the Chadstone shopping centre, which is the jewel in Vicinity’s property crown.
“The design and retail offer in The Market Pavilion combines the best of the modern fresh food marketplaces one visits whilst in Europe with the ambience and much-loved brands that are enthusiastically embraced by Melburnians locally – reflecting the quality, variety and elevated consumer experience which Chadstone is known for,” Mr Boyle said.
Adding further lustre to that gourmet experience will be a number of services including what Mr Boyle said was a world-first “fresh food concierge” that would allow shoppers to buy their food, then have it stored in dedicated fridges for them to pick up later. The Market Pavilion food concierge will also include personalised shopping experiences, grocery refrigeration storage, and menu planning featuring AI-generated recipe inspiration.
At the precinct’s heart, The Kitchen will offer interactive and engaging experiences hosted by The Market Pavilion’s curated collection of premium food retailers.
The development includes a refurbished dining laneway offering casual all-day dining and a broad range of cuisines including Master Lanzhou Noodle Bar, Papa Rich, Panda Yum Cha, Seoul Garden, Shanghai Red, Sushi Sushi, Yo Chi, and YX Mini Hotpot.
As part of this move, the broadening of its food offering and growing metropolis of offices and office towers, Chadstone has also retired its long-used tagline, “Chadstone, the fashion capital” in favour of the simple branding, “Chadstone”.
“We have recently dropped ‘the fashion capital’, so whereas we were ‘Chadstone, the fashion capital’, we have evolved … because really what we are, whether it is the capital of fashion or the capital of food or entertainment, we have certainly seen that we have outgrown the fashion capital,” Mr Boyle said.
“Fashion will always be at the heart of the offer at Chadstone, but certainly what we are seeing now from consumers is they will use us for entertainment, dining, stay in our beautiful hotel, all their fresh food shop and not do an ancillary retail shop all the time.”
Originally published as Chadstone’s ambitious Market Pavilion food precinct prepares for opening
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