Buchanan Galleries are creating a new indoor street food hub that offers space to local independent traders. Taste Buchanan opens tomorrow after a dramatic refurbishment of the shopping centre’s top floor. We are, quite frankly, intrigued by the prospect. We spoke to Lyndsay Anderson from StreetDots, who are masterminding the project, to find out what we can expect.
Glasgowist: How did the conversation start about putting Taste Buchanan together?
Lyndsay: Well, Buchanan Galleries owners are Land Securities, one of the largest property companies in the UK. We have a company called StreetDots which is a technology and service platform that works with land partners to take space on in their locations and bring street food and pop-up retailers into it.
We were approached by Land Securities in January. They said they had a food court that is currently only utilised by Burger King and they wanted to know what we would suggest doing with it.
We suggested taking our street food model and moving it indoors – make it almost like an incubator for young food brands that rotate into the space for typically 8-12 weeks. It gives them the opportunity to step up into retail and have the chance to get into the city centre in a way that they typically wouldn’t do as emerging street food brands. We want to have the space very design led and bring in food entrepreneurs over the lifetime of the project, which will be about two years long.
We’re big fans of street food and we’re particularly excited about things that are happening in Glasgow with pop-up restaurants, food trucks and markets. Do you feel this development has come at the right time to tap into the potential in the city?
Definitely. There’s been a huge movement over the last five years around street food across the whole of the UK. I know that Glasgow has had its issues around traders trading outdoors so this is a great opportunity.
There definitely seems to be more demand for space than there is space available right now.
I think what’s nice about this sector is the route to access is a bit easier than, say, getting your first restaurant. There’s a lot of people within street food who have always been passionate about food and it becomes a self-fulfilling cycle, as you see more street food available, more people come into the sector. I think this will add a lot of excitement and I think the restaurant scene in Glasgow is pretty hot anyway. In the last 12 years it has become a lot more diverse and exciting and I think street food is a reflection of that. I came to university here and it feels really different now coming back and doing this project.
What are the challenges in making a multi-purpose restaurant space that’s not specifically for one type of cooking? Presumably you have to be prepared for every eventuality, everything from Korean soft buns to pizza slices.
Absolutely! Gosh, the challenges are varied, not least the fact that no-one has really done this before. There’s a challenge in having the right equipment in place in order to meet the demands of all the different trader types. There’s a challenge in rotating traders, who typically come in as an individual brand for quite a long time, even as a pop-up. Our shortest rotation is eight weeks so there are a lot of challenges in terms of movement but the way this space has been designed is very clever, it’s a flexible unit that will allow around 50 different food brands to come in over its lifetime.
What about the response from traders, have you been inundated with offers from food van owners wanting to convert to an indoor space?
Yeah, there was a real rush when there was the first initial press coverage. When you put the call out to traders in the first instance and nobody knows your brand or what you are doing then obviously it looks like a bit of a gamble coming into something new. When we laid out what we were trying to do and what the opportunity was, we saw a real uplift. We’ve got the first rotation finalised and we are ready to go. A lot of different traders are coming, some are your typical festival guys who would do T in the Park, others are those that do the Sunday markets in their vans or have a street pitch. They often travel between Glasgow and Edinburgh to try to build up their business. There’s a real combination of traditional producers through to the big established festival operators.
Presumably there would be an opportunity too for established Glasgow restaurants to come in and do a stripped-down version of their own cuisine, or to try out something a bit different here?
We’d love that. That, for me, would be super exciting. I think we will see that as the space matures. We could see some of the young, independent food brands that have got restaurants actually come down and get involved in street food. If you take someone like Crabshakk, you could see them coming in and doing the crab burger, or Ox & Finch leading with one product type. I would love to see this space be a real combination of those that have just landed on the food scene combined with the more mature guys who want to diversify their brand. That’s what is so great about Taste Buchanan, it almost should be a space of learning, where everyone is picking up things from one another.
What about getting the balance right – you have lots of traders rotating in, how do you ensure there is a good mix within the units so there is a bit of diversity in the food?
It’s really just looking at the food types. We’re always matching up people who are applying to us so we have a mix. At the moment the space has four hot food kiosks, the bar which does beer, cocktails and smoothies, then we have our secondary coffee bar – in the first rotation they are doing a sweet and savoury waffle offer – then two carts that will be typically dessert led.
So hot food, drink, dessert, coffee, it should always feel like you can come in and get everything that you need. We’ll also balance food that people might expect and other dishes that they may consider a bit challenging.
In the first rotation we’ve got Nomad Pizza from the guys behind Firebird and Buffalo Farm who are kind of doing the classic pizza and burger. Then you have Chompsky who are doing Asian bao buns which are still relatively new on the scene and Union Waffles who will serve fried chicken waffles. There will be a chance to experiment with food in a way that might be unexpected for a shopping mall.