Scott Philipson, marketing manager of Pacific Retail, the parent company of Go Sushi, believes more and more customers are seeing the health benefit and sales potential of sushi. The number of independent operators has increased as well as the expansion of other larger competitors in the market and this has made it more difficult to secure premium locations at reasonable rates with centres having more operators to choose from, he says.

“Centres have also seen the appeal of sushi and are looking at placing more and more direct competitors in the one centre. We used to be the only sushi operator in many of our centres but now we are seeing that some stores have at least one other operator and sometimes two other operators in the centre. This has seen increased competition and reduced turnover predictions when estimating figures for new stores.”

The good news is that landlords are interested in discussing rent free periods, fit out contributions and percentage to estimated turnover figures to enable businesses to get into the centre more easily and cost effectively, he reports.

“Landlords are also more interested in increasing the rent tenure to enable business owners a greater period of time to get a better return on investment for the new business.”

Back to back brands

One particular benefit of a company such as Pacific Retail which has more than one franchise brand in its portfolio, says Philipson, is to open back to back stores in larger areas because they are not competing, and place more than one brand in a centre at one time.

“Store location in a centre is one of the most important things to get right in running a successful business and all our brands have a different location specification. Go Sushi mainly looks for centres with high traffic flow and primary and secondary catchment areas that suit our core demographic.

“We aim for locations either just outside or on the way to the main centre food court to ensure large traffic flow at primary times but also allow customers to visit and enjoy a healthy cost effective lunch without the hustle and bustle of the centre food court at lunchtime. It also ensures customers need to walk past our store to reach the food court.”

Other prime sites are outside major retailers with fresh food areas such as bakeries or butchers.

“These sites are also good for traffic flow and lunch time trade while also accessing the customers who want to quickly get into the centre for groceries and want a quick snack on the go!”