From Hlemmur to Selfoss, food halls owners are raking it in
We’ve been reliably informed that in less literate households the child (who has gone to school to learn to read and write, add and subtract) is the one who declaims The Reykjavík Grapevine aloud to their enraptured family. In this way even the huddled mass stays in touch with the goings on of Culture. It’s these people, and that little child, we have in mind when we commission these free business ideas. Yes, that’s right, it’s a shout out to the dispossessed! It’s time to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and become possessed… by the spirit of enterprise.
The human experience is a cycle of base desires briefly filled. The need for nutrition yields to a loaf of bread. Maddening sexual thirst is becalmed by various means we don’t need to get into here. And sleep — nature’s sweet restorative or the cousin of death, depending on who you ask — is a gentle thing that is, unfortunately, hard to monetise.
Lately food has been on everyone’s tongue. “This is the way to make real money,” they say in between large bites. The iron law of the stomach is that a man’s gotta eat. The human need for nutrition has for millennia been a steady and profitable frontier for business bros and high-powered girlbosses alike.
A beginner in the art of business might notice this core need for food and decide to attack the problem directly and open up a restaurant. This is not the path to riches, young one. Opening a restaurant is like riding a tiger that really would prefer you off its back. Some people are very skilled at riding tigers. But in all likelihood, you are not. You can ride it for a while, but eventually you’ll be in the dirt, wailing, filling out the bankruptcy papers.
Instead you want to sell shovels in a gold rush. While this can take many forms, the most profitable one in recent years has been the food hall. In the last ten years they’ve sprouted like the lilies of the field. And for good reason.
Imagine the average family: the father, exhausted from a long day resentfully scrolling Pinstagram, the mother explores the outer limits of Netflix, the children loudly repeat the latest school meme. At 1800 hours the first stomach rumbles, by 1900 hours it’s a cacophony. They have so little time to spare, yet their decadent tastebuds call out for variety. Wife demands an oriental feast, child 1 wants bolognese, child 2 wants pizza and husband hankers for a taste of Central America, trembling at the thought of having to eat anything that doesn’t come in a tortilla. What can one do?
Back in the day, you would have argued it out like a proper family, spilling tears and making fond memories. Today, you simply go to the food hall, where no compromise need be made and everyone gets what they want. Happy days! Listen to the grateful noises as their favourite flavour combination reaches their slippery tongues. Mmmmm, yes, mmmm. That purring is the sound of Iceland ascending the BMI scale, accompanied by the irregular background slap of burgers hitting grills, the kneading of pizza dough, the searing of oily vegetables.
Somewhere in the food hall back room, someone will be counting wads of cash. But it won’t be the food vendors. They’re swappable content providers. Peons in the grand scheme. When Mexican food goes out of fashion the taco specialist will hit the lonely road, singing sad songs, dreams long dead, while the next bushy-tailed vendor takes their place. Meanwhile, the food hall slumlord carefully calibrates the rent upward to squeeze profit from the new vendor, leaving them just enough to get by, and leaving themselves that much better off.
I trust this will have opened your eyes to the possibilities, dear reader. You can figure out the details on your own. No, no, there’s really no need to thank me. Thank you.
Freyr Thorvaldsson has written widely for the Grapevine business empire, including the The Toronto Grapevine, The Kuala Lumpur Grapevine and The Grapevine, Texas Grapevine. On freyr.substack.com he publishes business wisdom to his cult following, an elite group of 49 individuals.
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