Double Zero to open in Chinook Centre
Market-style experience included
The Concorde Group will open its second Double Zero restaurant location later this year in Calgary’s Chinook Centre.
Double Zero will be offering up its pizza, beer and wine in a two-storey space in the northeast corner of the mall. The concept includes a marketstyle experience on the main floor and a more traditional restaurant and patio offering on the second floor.
Eve Renaud, property manager at Chinook Centre, said there has been a trend at the shopping centre to add top quality sit-down restaurants.
“Our customers are used to travelling to the U.S. and as part of their shopping experiences there they see some really high-end, highquality restaurants with great service, great food and great atmosphere,” said Renaud. “I think they’re really expecting that as part of their shopping experience back home.”
Double Zero’s opening will bring to six the number of restaurants at Chinook Centre.
“The north end of our shopping centre, especially with our new retailers, they’re really craving a new sit-down, enclosed full service restaurant,” said Renaud. “So this will be another addition to the north end of the mall.”
Jon Molyneux, one of the managing partners of Double Zero, said the restaurant is expected to open in the fall of 2013 in about 10,000 square feet of space with overall seating at just over 300. The company opened its first location in May 2011 in the downtown CORE shopping centre.
He said the concept for the Chinook location includes a market experience.
“The attraction there is obviously to cater to the people that both work in the mall and in Chinook’s case it is one of the busiest malls in Canada,” said Molyneux.
“One of the things we’re trying to do as a company in general is bring different food offerings to the city whether that is in the mall environment or wherever we’re opening. The consumer in Calgary is travelling a lot more and is a little more educated and so to be able to bring this type of offering to a place like Chinook Centre it feels really good as to where the model fits.”
The company is looking at opening more locations in the city.
Alberta-based retail specialist, Jay de Nance, associate with Fairfield Commercial Real Estate Inc. in Calgary, said shopping centre owners are courting casual, family-oriented restaurants to broaden their dining offerings and encourage shoppers to stay longer.