Knox City Shopping Centre, Eastland: Pretzel to open at Knox Ozone and Eastland Shopping Centre

A popular snack shop known for its “crazy” pink-themed restaurants and delicious handmade pastries is coming Ringwood.

Pretzel is opening at Knox Ozone.

Popular snack shop Pretzel is coming to two shopping centres in Melbourne’s outer east.

Known as “Perth’s favourite one stop snack shop” Pretzel is set to open at Westfield Knox and Eastland in early April.

Each pretzel, presented in pretty pink containers, is handmade by artisan pretzel bakers on-site.

According to the Westfield Knox website, all pretzels at the store are topped with the “freshest and funnest” ingredients, from classic salted to cheese and pepperoni and even marshmallow fluff.

The Knox store will open next to Sushi Jiro, while the Eastland store will be next to the Nike store.

Pretzel’s Perth-based owner Brittany Garbutt, 27, said the stores would join existing Melbourne outlets in Chapel St, Westfield Doncaster and Melbourne Central.

“(The) Knox store is beautiful, it’s a huge tenancy with 10m high ceilings so I’m super excited about it,” she said.

After working for a pretzel store when she was younger, Ms Garbutt decided to start her own business, opening her first store in Perth in 2017.

“(Pretzels) are such an under-appreciated item and they’re only ever done poorly, generally,” she said.

“So I was like I’m going to take it over and make it beautiful because the company I worked for a kid made the world’s best pretzels in my opinion.”

Ms Garbutt now has five stores in Perth, and another under construction.

She said all her stores had crazy themes, based around the colour pink.

“Knox is designed after a stage show of my favourite band The 1975,” she said.

“Which is ridiculous but it’s kind of the fun part of my job.”

Eastland will have a Miami Vice theme.

Ms Garbutt said they were looking for staff members for their new stores.

People can apply through the company’s Instagram page.

“We’re a big happy family of pink pretzel makers,” she said.

It’s not the only new restaurant coming to Knox Ozone, with Martini & Co set to open in the former Paesano site, and bar Roc’s Social near the Village Cinemas.

Shoppers were shocked when McDonald’s closed in the Westfield Knox food court recently, with many lamenting the lack of food options inside the centre.

When Leader visited the food court on Tuesday, the former Macca’s site was still boarded up, and several other food outlets were closed.

Elsewhere in the centre, the Salt & Pepper store has signs up announcing it is closing as it’s coming to the end of its lease.

But in better news for shoppers, Bonds is set to open a new store on level 2.