Harrods bets heavily on fine dining
Over its 170-year-plus history, Harrods has always paid attention to food. The luxury shopping institution got its start as a grocery store that sold tea and biscuits, and adapted early to the food hall game.
Still, the iconic brand has generally viewed its dining spaces as places to refuel, maybe with a cup of coffee and a (good) slice of cake, before getting back out on the shopping floor. Until earlier this year, diners were kicked out of the building when the store closed at 7 p.m.
Times have changed. The store is now investing heavily in destination dining throughout the property.
In the past year and a half, Harrods has opened a handful of notable dining and drinking spots, including Harrods Social by Jason Atherton and a patisserie of luxurious treats from celebrated French baker Angelo Musa.
In 2024, Harrods will become home to another notable chef from a Michelin-starred restaurant when
Dave Pynt, owner of Singapore’s famed barbecue spot Burnt Ends, opens his first spot there outside the city-state.
“Harrods views restaurants as a critical part of our business and future,” says Ashley Saxton, the store’s director of restaurants and kitchens. “We’re using restaurants to fuel the store’s longterm success.”
The highest-profile dining spot at Harrods for the foreseeable future will be Studio Frantzen, slated to open on Nov 28 on the store’s top two floors.
The restaurant is the first UK outpost for Bjorn Frantzen, one of the few chefs in the world with two restaurants with three Michelin stars: his eponymous flagship in Stockholm and Zén in Singapore.
The concept of an accessible Frantzen restaurant has appeal: In a little over 24 hours after opening up reservations, Studio Frantzen logged some 1,500 bookings from all over the world.
It maintains that walk-ins will be accepted.
“We want to convert as much footfall as possible,” Saxton says of attracting Harrods shoppers to the restaurants.
Before the pandemic, Saxton calculates, only 8% of people in Harrods were eating there. (The figure doesn’t include food hall shoppers.)
“Now, at least 20% of shoppers touch the restaurant in some way,” he says.
That has translated into sales for the store. Harrods restaurant sales are up 44% for the first three-quarters of this year, compared to the same time period in 2019. That’s despite the fact that there are two fewer restaurants than at that time.
“We’re seeing 700 bookings per day,” says Saxton, walk-ins not included.
He declined to provide revenue figures. On Oct 30, the store announced a £51 million pre-tax profit in 2021, with an increase in sales of 35.5%.
Revenue from the restaurant will
Harrods views restaurants as a critical part of our business and future. We’re using restaurants to fuel the store’s longterm success. ASHLEY SAXTON Director of restaurants and kitchens
come close to tripling in the five-year period from 2020 to 2025, according to Saxton, notwithstanding the pandemic.
“We are already well on track to achieve it,” he says.
The concept of using restaurants to attract customer traffic has been going strong for decades at hotels and at casinos aiming to attract high-rolling customers.
Now, says Saxton, “we’re really leaning into it for retail.”
The store has launched multiple luxury brand-name drinking and dining spots, including the inaugural Jimmy Choo Café and Europe’s first Tiffany Blue Box Café, which scored 1,100 bookings in one day.
“We speak with LVMH regularly,” Saxton adds. “Restaurants have become the new entry vehicle for luxury brands. Gen Z is spending money in fashion and in dining.”
Destination restaurants have become a fixture in department stores lately.
Earlier this year, Selfridges in London opened the ambitious vegan restaurant Adesse, from chef Matthew Kenney, with such dishes as avocado tikka with potato bread.
New York has welcomed a number of high-profile restaurant openings in Midtown, most notably the Philippe Starck-designed L’Avenue at Saks Fifth Avenue, an offshoot of the Costes brothers’ Paris haunt that’s become famous for its guest list.
When Nordstrom opened its first New York store by installing seven restaurants featuring notable chefs from Seattle like Tom Douglas and Ethan Stowell. And the glamorous Goodman’s Bar in Bergdorf Goodman offers a place for caviar and potato chips and highpowered Champagne.
Restaurants haven’t been able to save all the high-end shopping venues.
Neiman Marcus opened to great acclaim in the $25 billion Hudson Yards development in 2019 on Manhattan’s West Side.
The three in-house dining spots and bar were, like the store, often empty, even before the start of the pandemic. One year later, the restaurants and store closed.