Bowling For Customer Time: Welcome To The New Footfall Drivers

With a major hole where many of the traditional retail anchors once occupied space, retail destinations and mixed-use developments have instead turned to a new generation of anchors, as likely to be food and beverage outlets or competitive socialising concepts as they are big-name store brands.

However, with tastes and trends constantly changing, the bid to attract consumers is heating up, and landlords are becoming increasingly ambitious about the different blends of F&B, leisure, services, live music and even green initiatives and pop-up department stores that they are prepared to introduce to attract customers.

Postpandemic footfall has become the great battleground for physical retail, and destinations are rewriting the rulebook on what makes a great centre.

The backdrop remains challenging. Footfall rose marginally from July to August in all UK retail destinations, according to analysis by MRI Software. Compared with 2023 levels, footfall rose 0.1% in all UK retail destinations, boosted by activity in retail parks rising 3.3%.

As a result, more changes are on their way, according to UK-based Viklari Consulting Managing Director Jonathan Doughty, who was behind one of Europe’s most ambitious food and leisure concepts, Foodtopia at MyZeil, Frankfurt, which ECE opened in 2019.

“When I look back now, I would have put more leisure into Foodtopia,” he said. “At the time, the food concept was already quite a stretch, but now we’re seeing a much deeper blend of leisure and F&B. I would describe entertainment as the lubricant for F&B because the right concepts allow people to move seamlessly between the two.”

He cited the colocation of competitive socialising, from bowling to darts, as a major change from the traditional leisure offers that often had little positive iterative impact on the wider retail environment.

“Traditional leisure often feeds its own. Gyms have very little positive impact on the rest of the retail, a casino is its own environment where people play, eat and drink and then leave,” Doughty said. “The new wave of leisure offers complete a circuit. People come, stay for longer, might buy from the stores or have a night cap at a bar afterwards. There is a synergistic relationship, and it extends their spending.”

Doughty also said retail destinations will see far more live music in the future, as people become more comfortable with paying a premium for environments and dining with DJs and live performances.

“Canned music has had its day,” he said.

The shifts in retail usage have enticed back investors, who avoided retail for a lengthy period but now see appealing repositioning opportunities. One such example is Ardent, the U.S.-headquartered investor that bought city centre mall Touchwood in Solihull and The Royal Exchange, the City of London’s luxury-focused destination, as it bet on a UK market recovery.

The Ardent Companies acquired the retail element of The Royal Exchange in October 2022, and together with specialist asset manager Pave, it has implemented a new leasing strategy and appointed Bruce Gillingham Pollard to help refresh the tenant mix.

The scheme achieved 96% occupancy following the addition of four new tenants, skincare specialist Dr David Jack, Rosslyn Coffee, luxury footwear brand Horatio and bespoke tailor Sartoria dei Duchi.

The Square Mile has experienced growing visitor numbers, especially at the weekend, and the creation of a new public realm around The Royal Exchange is helping drive demand, with a new mezzanine level now hosting the Engel, a cocktail bar concept inspired by 1920s Berlin, and Jang, a Korean and Japanese restaurant.

Footfall for July was up 20.4% against the same month last year, at 65,330 visitors.

“The City of London is back,” said Ardent UK Managing Director Andrew Hilston, who is speaking at Bisnow’s Driving Footfall: Retail and Mixed-Use event in London on 11 September.

The Royal Exchange is just one example of the growing acceptance of upscale dining in retail-led environments, as F&B has adapted quickly. 

Department store Steen & Strom is adding food options to every storey. 

“For any major retail destination or department store, a strong fashion offer remains vital to attracting footfall. But food and beverage is now hugely important,” said UK retail consultant David Wilkinson, who is overseeing Steen & Strom’s transformation. “We’re putting F&B on every floor to help attract and then keep customers. We’ll have something like 11 units by the time the transformation is complete.”

Pop-ups remain another strong footfall driver, and Lone Design Club and Landsec partnered to create Co.Lab, a venture that will use large, vacant retail spaces to support online brands. The first site will open at the end of September in the St David’s shopping centre in Cardiff and remain operational until at least Christmas.

The 5K SF area will effectively be a department store and will host more than 80 brands, operating on leases of one to three months as shop-in-shops, smaller concession spaces or kiosks/counters.

“Our strategy is driven by data and insights to deliver targeted interventions that will increase footfall and dwell time, which in turn attract more brands,” Landsec Head of Retail Asset Management Nik Porter said.

He stressed the need for a brand mix “fuelled by newness and experience.”

“Successful retail destinations are those which prioritise innovative new spaces and provide memorable experiences for guests each time they visit. Increasingly, it’s about offering something guests wouldn’t ordinarily expect from their retail experience,” he added.

Shopping centres are adding a swathe of concepts from upscale mini-golf to ax-throwing to the mix, trying to provide fresh content for destinations.

“We're witnessing a significant shift in what people expect from their leisure time. They're no longer just seeking an activity, but a memorable experience that blends social interaction, immersive environments and a touch of competition,” said Lane 7 founder Tim Wilks, another speaker at Bisnow's 11 September event. “This evolution has turned leisure into a powerful force for transforming destinations. It can inject life, energy and a sense of community.”

Lane 7 opened its first site in 2013 and now operates 17 bowling and entertainment venues across England and Scotland, with new sites in Newcastle, Edinburgh and Camden set to open this year. It is also opening its first European sites, with two new locations in Dublin — one in the city centre and one on the outskirts — and a venue at ECE's Potsdamer Platz in Berlin set to open shortly.

It aims to secure eight to 10 more sites across Europe this year, Wilks said.

Other entertainment concepts include interactive football concept Ballerz, which has opened on the rooftop of Bluewater’s car park, and Padel Social Club, which will launch six new courts on the roof of Southside Shopping Centre in Wandsworth. Meanwhile, visitors to Trinity in Leeds can bring clothes to the Re.Pair Lab to be upcycled into something new. 

“The bottom line is that people are prepared to pay more for really good experiences,” Doughty said. “F&B is on a journey of rediscovery. We have started to do all the things we stopped doing — darts, bowling, indoor golf, jazz, music, piano bars — as the digital world took over. Now we are firmly going back to experiential physical.”