By Craig Patterson

Italian food concept Eataly has announced the November opening date of its first Canadian location, which will be located in the overhauled retail podium of Toronto’s Manulife Centre at 55 Bloor Street West. The company says that more locations will open in Canada if the right spaces can be found.

Eataly is a hybrid grocery store/restaurant, which some refer to as a ‘grocerant’. The Toronto location will feature a grocery store, fresh market, four restaurants, and at least six bars, counters, and coffee shops. The company expects locals to make weekly shopping trips to shop for groceries at Eataly, which will become another grocery option for Toronto’s affluent high-density Bloor-Yorkville area.

The Toronto Eataly will open to the public at 5:00pm on Wednesday, November 13, according to Eataly’s social media. The company formerly announced the Manulife Centre in September of 2016 after much anticipation. Negotiations for the space were ongoing for years and Retail Insider first reported on Eataly’s search for Toronto space in February of 2014. A source familiar with the location search informed us that the company was seeking space in a historical-looking building with King Street West begin an option, as well as Manulife Centre which was ultimately decided on for a variety of reasons.

*Manulife Centre on October 21, 2019. photo: Retail Insider*

Eataly’s street-facing entrance will include a revolving door and prominent upper-level signage. A van Cleef & Arpels to the right in this photo is part of the recently re-opened Maison Birks store. photo: Retail Insider

Eataly partnered with Selfridges Group and Terroni Restaurants for its entrance to Canada, though Terroni is reportedly no longer involved with the Toronto concept. Eataly's Canadian operations partially owned by the billionaire Weston family, who also own Holt Renfrew, directly across the street from Manulife Centre.

Eataly’s Manulife Centre space will span about 50,000 square feet over three levels, with the majority of space occupying a second level space that has been under construction for a couple of years. A street-level entrance facing onto busy Bloor Street West will greet guests with revolving doors in a space with grab-and-go options and escalators leading upstairs to the main space. In addition, there will be a lower-level space in the Manulife Centre that connects to adjacent commercial buildings including the Holt Renfrew Centre, Cumberland Terrace, and the Bloor-Yonge subway station contained within the Hudson’s Bay Centre.

Included will be dining options with a view over Bloor Street, featuring seasonal dishes with an Italian theme. Both local and Italian products will be available in the grocer component of Eataly, including options from small-scale farmers as well as artisanal producers in Italy. Eataly will also have an element of ‘theatre’ with live demonstrations, cooking classes, and complimentary tastings.

Manulife Centre’s retail podium has seen an overhaul at a cost of more than $100 million, and an expansion of the podium added about 35,000 square feet which will be occupied primarily by Eataly. Earlier this year, Maison Birks reopened its flagship store in the Manulife Centre at the southeast corner of Bloor Street and Bay Street, and the centre’s Indigo flagship store also recently saw an overhaul. Shoppers Drug Mart moved into the concourse level of Manulife Centre a couple of months ago, and the concourse-level Bloor Street Market grocery store recently renovated and rebranded as a Loblaw Independent CityMarket. Real estate consultancy Beauleigh strategized the retail mix at Manulife Centre and negotiated new tenants that include a recently opened Pilot Coffee Roasters retail space.

Celebrity chef Mario Batali helped put Eataly on the map in the US, and is no longer involved with operations after allegations of sexual misconduct. He was not involved in the Canadian expansion, according to Eataly.

Eataly will give Toronto’s Bloor-Yorkville area a boost when it opens next month. The area has struggled for foot traffic amid considerable construction which includes the overhaul of Manulife Centre, the renovation of Holt Renfrew and the adjacent 60 Bloor Street West commercial building, ‘The ONE’ at 1 Bloor Street West, and other area construction that has resulted in the reduction of hundreds of parking spaces. We recently reported that JLL brokers are bullish on the area as construction is finished and new retailers move into Bloor-Yorkville.

*Rendering: City of Toronto/building application*

Grocery options are already plentiful in Toronto’s Bloor-Yorkville area, which boasts the highest concentration of grocery stores anywhere in Canada. Whole Foods operates a 50,000 square foot store at the nearby Yorkville Village, and Pusateri’s Fine Foods operates about two blocks north of Eataly at the southeast corner of Bay Street and Yorkville Avenue. Chef Mark McEwan opened a grocery store at 1 Bloor Street East earlier this year, and Longo’s operates a small grocery store at the northwest corner of Bloor Street East and Park Road. Rabba Fine Foods also operates several locations in the immediate area, all of which are open 24-hours.

Eataly is considering opening a second Toronto location, according to the company, and several options are likely being considered. As mentioned, a heritage building could be sought to open another downtown location closer to Toronto’s Financial District, though there’s a risk that it could cannibalize sales at the Manulife Centre location. Eataly has opened a handful of locations in shopping centres, and Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre could therefore be a target for a suburban Eataly storefront.

The Vancouver and Montreal markets are also targets, according to Eataly. The right spaces will have to be found, however. In Vancouver, Eataly was said to have been presented a retail space at the Sinclair Centre at 757 W. Hastings Street — Eataly would have occupied a space formerly occupied by a Plaza Escada store at the northwest corner of Hastings and Granville Streets, though it was deemed too small. Finding a large enough space for Eataly in downtown Vancouver could be a challenge.

The Montreal market is also said to be a target for Eataly. The city has more heritage buildings in its downtown core than both Toronto and Vancouver, and some possible retail spaces are coming available. Forever 21 will vacate its 25,000 square foot space at the northeast corner of Ste-Catherine Street West and Rue de la Montagne this year after the retailer announced that it was pulling out of Canada amid bankruptcy — Holt Renfrew Ogilvy is located directly across the street. Another option is the existing Holt Renfrew store at 1300 Sherbrooke Street West, which will be closing next spring upon the completion of the newly rebranded Holt Renfrew Ogilvy two blocks south. Sources say that the existing Holt Renfrew store on Sherbrooke Street will be redeveloped to include retail at its base as well as luxury residential residences above.

Globally, Eataly operates almost 40 locations, with 12 being in Italy. Other global markets include Brazil (Sao Paulo), Germany (Munich), Turkey (Istanbul), South Korea (Seoul), Sweden (Stockholm), Russia (Moscow) as well as multiple locations in markets including the Middle East and Japan. Eataly’s first location in the UK will open in London next year — Eataly had originally planned to open at Selfridges in London, though the deal never concluded. In the United States, Eataly operates two locations in New York City (Flatiron and downtown), Chicago, Boston, Los Angels, and Las Vegas. A Dallas location will open next year at NorthPark Center, which is the city’s equivalent to Toronto’s Yorkdale Shopping Centre.

*photo: Chicago business (eataly chicago)*

The Chicago location spans 63,000 square feet over multiple levels, and was forced to close temporarily after it sold out of all of its food during its first week of operations in December of 2013. The Flatiron location in New York City reportedly saw sales exceeding US $85 million in 2013. The Westfield Century City Eataly, which opened in the fall of 2017, is the largest in the US with about 67,000 square feet of space. The largest Eataly in the world, located in Rome, spans 170,000 square feet.

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Eataly was founded in Turin, Italy, in 2007. Founder Oscar Farinetti wanted to combine elements of a lively, open environment with a learning centre to create an atmosphere conducive to shopping, tasting, and learning about high-quality Italian foods. Inspired by the European food-hall concept, its massive stores are populated with tasting areas and gourmet restaurants to complement the upscale food offerings. Customers can taste the artisan products, learn about them from educated staff, and buy the ingredients to recreate Eataly’s restaurant food at home, all at fair prices.

We will be touring the Toronto Eataly space before its opening and will report back.

Editor’s Note: Learn more about how landlords are integrating food halls and markets into retail properties at Retail Council of Canada’s Brick-and-Mortar Forum, being held in the downtown Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge Street, north of Bloor) on the morning of Tuesday, November 19th. Speakers will include:

Marcelle Rademeyer, President & CEO of Beauleigh, and Jean-Francois Nault, Partner and COO of Beauleigh. (including a discussion of Eataly)
Craig Patterson, Editor-in-Chief, Retail Insider (Author of the Retail Council of Canada Shopping Centre Study),
Nick Iozzo, Sr. Director Retail Innovation and Lead Generation, Oxford Properties Group,
Claire Santamaria, VP Yorkdale Shopping Centre, Oxford Properties
Mark Palazzo, Senior Director, Leasing, Cadillac Fairview Corp.
John Crombie, Executive Managing Director, Retail Services, Canada, Cushman & Wakefield
Chris Chan, Head of Retail Industry, Google Canada, and
Tracy Smith, Senior Vice-President, Marketing & Innovation Retail, Ivanhoé Cambridge