A new street market is set to launch in London, offering fantastic new opportunities for brands from both regional and overseas markets.
Simone Moroni, managing director of The Italian Job pub group, is behind the concept which will be set to expand to other parts of the UK later on.
Location already confirmed
Moroni announced that he is teaming up with the owners of The Nags Head Market in Holloway to launch his new concept, The Upper Place, in January 2019. Situated on the first floor of the market, the space will comprise 7,000 square foot and will be home to 17 traders. A further five will find room on a ground floor court.
It looks like there will be plenty of food recruitment going on in the near future, as the vendors are yet to be confirmed and so will need lots of new staff to cover them. Moroni has hinted that they will include both local and overseas brands, some of whom will be making their London debut. He is also reportedly negotiating with a pizza chef who is known to be one of the best in Italy to come and take a spot.
“He is very successful and runs his own pizzerias already and is in international guides, he is considering us to open his first pizzeria in the UK,” says Moroni. “We are talking to mixed operators, they are going to mostly do food but also some wine bars. Some are not well established in London, they might be very successful in Birmingham or Manchester, some are very successful in Spain. Some are brand new, have been working for someone else in the past and decided they want to run their own business.”
One of the vendors, perhaps predictably, will be The Italian Job. The company already has two London pubs as well as one more at Mercato Metropolitano, and they will have two locations at the new market: a large bar on the upper level and a smaller bar on the lower floor with a focus on craft beer.
Trading plans
The traders will be starting with flexible two-year contracts. They will be able to choose from full-size units from between 20 to 25 square metres, or smaller units at 10 to 12 square metres. There will be communal tables for diners to sit at, with a roof terrace which the market hopes will be open by spring.
There will be plenty of food vacancies coming up, from chefs to servers, and likely opportunities for management as well. Any companies who do sign up will be wanting to get staff into training as soon as possible, so those listings will start to appear quickly.
Moroni has suggested that they will likely be opening more street food markets using The Upper Place as a name in the near future.
He says: “We would definitely like to open more. We partnered with the landlord who owns several properties of this kind [in London]. Fresh food markets now are being converted to street food markets as a way of evolving business wise. We are also considering other cities where these concepts are less present, Birmingham for example. We need to make this first one successful and adjust where we need to, then we can think about expanding.”
He says that he has had no trouble finding traders who wanted to sign up, in spite of a large number of other street food markets opening up across London. These include the Market Halls opening in Victoria this month, and Boxpark Wembley which is launching in December.
