One person, one cup, one neighbourhood at a time...

It’s barely 15 years since French activist José Bové was sentenced to three months imprisonment for the destruction of a McDonalds fast food restaurant in the small town of Millau, in the Midi-Pyrenees region in southern France.

The French sheep farmer and Roquefort cheese producer was protesting against what he called the “Mc-Domination” of the world, a term he favoured to refer to the standardisation of foods that, as he and his followers contended, were transforming the fruits of the earth into just one more mass product.

It would be easy to say we’ve come a long way since then, but it’s doubtful whether our tastebuds have changed all that much. Bové himself has progressed, though, becoming a folk hero, green activist, eco-warrior and even a presidential candidate in the 2007 elections.

Although for many purists in France, “MacDo” is the epitome of malbouffe, or bad food and bad eating, most of their countrymen evidently disagree. In fact – quelle surprise! – McDonalds in France is the Chicagobased burger chain’s Number 2 market worldwide after the US.

Not that the French don’t enjoy leisurely meals and two-hour lunchbreaks – of course they still do, frequently. But the reason why the world’s largest food chain can prosper so well cheek by jowl with all those Michelin three-star restaurants is because it has taken pains to adapt to French eating habits and tastes.

Much of its food is locally-sourced, it offers all kinds of Frenchified dishes, its cattle are all grass-fed (as against corn-fed), and are free of growth hormones, which makes them tastier to the French palate. Their restaurants are often spacious and tastefully decorated, encouraging young French people to linger and enjoy their food and McCafés.

And that’s just France. All across Europe the role of food and restaurants is becoming increasingly integrated with retail real estate and the bricks-andmortar shopping experience. Sophisticated food chains are now wooed as hotly-desired tenants in shopping malls, train stations, and other places where people gather – for many, the food courts in shopping emporia are as much a draw as the goods on offer. (In the interest of full disclosure, your editor admits to having visited IKEA more than once purely for a plate of Köttbullar, those delicious Swedish meatballs with lingonberry jam, followed by a slice of almond cake. Or a hot dog. And then rapidly departing, buying nothing else.)

Now, cynics have suggested that IKEA offer their food cheaply as their way of apologising for making you assemble your own furniture. Naturally their reasons are much more refined than that. If you’ve eaten for €6.99 including limitless free soft drink refill, you’ll KNOW you’ve had a good deal. So that fully-convertible double sofa at €899.00 is likely to be a good deal too, right? Right. Okay, since we don’t buy sofas that often, it’s harder to tell. But it certainly sounds like a good deal…

Food and shopping are becoming ever more intertwined. Investors in retail real estate traditionally preferred negotiating with sellers of shoes, fashion, electronics, and other physical goods for their store requirements, while food vendors had low margin items and complicated technical demands. With physical shopping morphing into a branch of entertainment, the gastronomic offerings – from artisan stands to spacious franchises of international system caterers, to diverse food courts integrated into the very heart of a retail paradise – now put their stamp on their surroundings like never before.

REFIRE is happy to be a sponsor of the 1st International Restaurant Real Estate Congress on June 6th/7th in Berlin, organised by Heuer Dialog and the magazine Food Service Europe & Middle East, German and international investors in retail, hotels and other forms of hospitality real estate will be meeting representatives of the top operators of system gastronomy to look at ways of improving footfall through the right ‘mix’ of classical shopping and the pleasures of the palate.

Companies sharing their experiences include L’Osteria, Backwerk, Hans im Glück, Vapiano, Sticks’n’Sushi and AmRest, among many others. Just last month the Polish group AmRest bought all 144 company-owned Starbucks coffee shops in Germany, giving AmRest the license to operate and develop the Starbucks brand further throughout the country, the largest market for Starbucks in continental Europe.

Starbucks’ mission statement - one person, one cup, one neighbourhood at a time – is about to get a fresh charge ofPolish energy, unlikely as that may havesounded until very recently.

The move will double the size of AmRest, the largest independent chain restaurant operator in central and eastern Europe. The group manages brandssuch as KFC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks and Burger King, and owns its own brands La Tagliatella and two Chinese gastro-concepts from Shanghai.

Is Eating really the new Shopping? It’s looking like it. Investors in retail have witnessed the rise in space from 7% to 15% of their lettable space over the past ten years. This is forecast to rise to 20% over the coming ten years, encompassing city and neighbourhood centres, retail parks, railway stations, airports and other mixed-use developments. The smartest investors are alert to these new changes, and are taking heed.

We’re keen to learn more about this fast-growing and particular segment of the real estate industry, and encourage investors to join us in Berlin . For those who can’t make it, we’ll keep you informed with our special conference report.