Restaurants Eager to Enter White-Hot Market

Restaurant concepts such as the food hall are taking off for retailers.

DALLAS—With food-and-beverage outlets now among the fastest-growing categories in retail centers, four emerging eatery formats are poised for significant expansion: food trucks, food halls, celebrity-chef restaurants and “grocerants,” according to a new CBRE Group Inc. report. The report highlights numerous data points that underscore the booming growth of restaurants, including the finding that total US restaurant sales surpassed grocery sales for the first time last year, according to government data, faring better since the recession than any other retail category. It also points out that, while millennials dine out more often, older generations spend more overall at restaurants. This points to more growth for restaurants as millennials age and earn more.

Jack Gosnell, senior vice president in CBRE’s Dallas office, tells GlobeSt.com: “The greater Dallas marketplace is white hot with new restaurants anxious to test this highly competitive market. Many concepts new to Texas are now competing for new restaurant space as it’s delivered. The latest recreation of the food court, now labeled food hall, is also on many developers’ plans. The format we’re seeing in Dallas right now is a building owner providing the infrastructure for independent operators to lease space—the Dallas Farmers Market and Trinity Groves are examples.”