CW Retail - Food Halls Report

Reading Terminal Market

I f San Francisco’s Ferry Building is the model of the new American food hall, Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market may be the perfect example of the classic American Food Hall. Reading Terminal Market was built on the site of what had been an open air market in the City of Brotherly Love in 1859. Train service arrived in 1893 with a rail terminal built over what is now the modern day food hall space. In its first few decades after that, Reading Terminal Market boasted as many as 380 merchants and it prospered—until the Great Depression. Eventually rail service was eliminated, and the market fell into disrepair. Ownership passed to the Pennsylvania Convention Authority in the early 1990s, after which the project has flourished. Interestingly, even though the

majority of vendors in the current Reading Terminal Market are on month-to-month leases, there has been extremely little turnover in the past 20 years. Today, Reading Terminal Market is home to more than 60 restaurants and merchants, including a number of purveyors of Pennsylvania Dutch specialties. While no longer a transit hub, it is immediately accessible to local and regional transit lines. Meanwhile, its location under the state-of-the-art Philadelphia Convention Center at the heart of downtown positions it as one of the city’s top tourism draws. While its mix of vendors leans more towards street and comfort foods than chef-driven concepts, this project continues to evolve and thrive.

Food Halls of America 2016

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