Over the past few years, Street Feast has transformed warehouses, carparks and office blocks into must-see destinations. Beautifully designed and lit, each space is like a miniature town of independent street food traders. With a great crowd, brilliant bars and music festival vibes, Street Feast offers some of the best food available anywhere in the world.
We caught up with Sales Director Emma Howe to find out what it’s like working at London’s hottest street food haunt.
Can you summarise the Street Feast concept for those that don’t know you?
At Street Feast we are all about creating vibes, taking underused and neglected spaces in London and turn them into indoor and outdoor vibrant street food markets and event spaces offering clients some really unique alternative venue options. These spaces include warehouses, carparks, abandoned markets, 1950’s dancehalls and office blocks with huge capacities of up to 3000 people. We are looking to continually expand over the coming few years.
Hawker House, Dinerama and Model Market– what’s the difference?
Hawker House is our huge indoor food and drink warehouse event space open all year around with capacity for 2,500 people. In the summer months we also have an additional outside area creating additional capacity of 500. The incredible warehouse space has nine brilliant bars, fourteen epic street food traders and loads of extra room to play around with. Hawker House is a short walk away from Canada Water Overground and Underground Station.
Dinerama, once a former bullion truck yard is now a fantastic two-level summer and winter 1,000 capacity venue in the heart of Shoreditch, creating the ultimate food and drink arena. From May–September we are an open-air playground full of multiple spaces to hire, and from October we re-open roofed and winter-proofed ready for the cosy winter season running through until April. Dinerama has 5 separate rooms that can be hired individually or the whole venue can be hired exclusively.
Model Market has transformed a 1950s market in the heart of Lewisham into one of South London’s most popular summer weekend destinations and event spaces open from months May to September. The former shop fronts have been turned into seated micro-diners with food served from an eleven-strong line-up of superb street food traders. There’s also five fantastic bars including a rooftop beer terrace and tiki bar.
What’s the most unusual neglected space that you’ve transformed?
I think we would have to say Model Market. Land Securities approached us to help with the placemaking and regeneration of Lewisham, presenting a derelict 1950s market as a potential site for Street Feast. Model Market, a 1950s market in the centre of Lewisham, was once a community hub but had been abandoned and boarded up. The Street Feast team completely transformed the site, clearing it out and reimagining it as a street food night market. The market units which were once occupied by electrical stores and hair accessory stalls were replaced by local traders including Mama’s Jerk (delicious barbecue jerk chicken) and South East Cakery (fantastic brownies and doughnuts), as well as brilliant bars. Open during the summer, Model Market now welcomes 4,000 guests every weekend to eat, drink and dance with everyone from young families, to couples and groups of friends attending. Model Market has once again become a community hub and place for Lewisham locals to come together. The marketing and PR executed around the launch of Model Market has helped put Lewisham on the map as a destination for Londoners to travel to for a great night out, as well as a great place to live. Land Securities have since approached Street Feast to work on similar projects this year.
Which stalls would you recommend visiting for the ultimate foodie?
Ooohhhh this is a hard one, as all of our traders are amazing, my favourites change week to week as I am always exploring new ones we are bringing on board. At the moment I can’t enough of the sliders at Breddos Tacos, and am also very guilty of a regular visit to Smoke Stack for their amazing Beef Brisket. If I am after a dessert option You Doughnut is a must, their salted caramel doughnuts are pretty life changing!
Tell us a bit about the plans for Street Feast for summer.
We are due to open Dalston Yard and Model Market in May for their summer season. For Dinerama our roof will come off and it will be a huge outdoor summer arena. Hawker House we have some big plans to create an additional 500 capacity outside space, complete with food trucks, bars, seating for 300, giant trampolines and a tiki cauldron. We are expecting 1M visitors across the summer this year. We are currently looking at some other sites to open this summer also, so it’s certainly keeping us busy.
Can you give us an example of how event companies have worked with you?
Since we launched the events division within the business (October 2015) we have had a surge of enquiries and some great events. We had 3 large last minute bookings for Christmas via event agencies, 1 which was a huge 600 person party which is rare to get so late on in the year. We then started off 2016 with a bang with a large 500 person event in January, along with some other great full venue hires for some fantastic brands, all via agencies. Our pipeline is looking very healthy for what will be our first year operating exclusive venue hires for corporates. We have over £2m of open enquiries, of which 65% of this is via event agencies. I think our venues give Event agencies something really unique to offer their clients. We are still under the radar in the events world, new people are exploring us every day.
What’s the best summer cocktail for rooftop drinking?
It has to be a Frozen Tequila Colada – Tequila tastes 10 times better at altitude!
At Evolve we work with some of the most prestigious and unusual venues available and offer a free venue finding service. If you’d like our help finding the perfect venue for your event or help on styling or producing your event just get in touch with the Evolve team on 020 7610 2808 or email info@evolve-events.com