The street-food hall has quietly become the high street’s favourite way to fill a dead department store, and Wigan is next. STACK Wigan opens this November inside the former Debenhams at Grand Arcade, turning a 48,000 square foot unit that had been sitting empty into one of the town centre’s biggest food and drink destinations.
The operator has confirmed the full line-up of six street-food kitchens. Wigan’s own Tikka Bros takes a second site in the town, alongside Liverpool’s Pattersons, Manchester imports Hello Oriental and Smash House, and STACK regulars Acropolis and ZZA Pizzeria. Around them sit five bars, a coffee shop, a pool area, an outdoor terrace and a live stage with big screens for sport, in a space built to hold more than 2,000 people. The opening is expected to create about 140 jobs.
What makes it notable is less the scale than the pattern. Across the country the shells left behind by collapsed department-store chains are being handed to food and drink operators rather than retailers, on the bet that people will still come into town for something they cannot get delivered. It is the same instinct, scaled up to a whole building, that we traced in how ‘street food’ took over the chain menu: the food court rebranded, loosened up and sold as a night out.
Whether the model holds depends on the traders, and STACK has leaned on local names and regional favourites rather than national chains, which is the right call for a town that will judge it on Tikka Bros as much as on the bars. It is a familiar play for anyone who watched other operators test new formats this year. For Wigan the more immediate win is simple: a landmark unit back in use, and a reason to be in the centre after the shops shut.
STACK Wigan opens at Grand Arcade this November. Details and images via STACK.