Time Out taps shareholders for London food hall

Time Out is stepping up the pace of opening food halls in its Markets business, as it raises fresh funds to back its first London site. As EG revealed last week, the company is in talks with the Crown Estate to take a space on Piccadilly Circus for its long-awaited first site in London. Time Out is raising £8m through a new share sale to fund that project as well as a new site in New York. It said the London site requires an initial cash outlay of £2.6m for the rent deposit on a 15-year lease. Anticipated handover is in 2026, with opening expected in 2027. The company said in an annual results statement that it expects to open seven markets in the period from November 2023 to November 2025, the same number it opened in the preceding decade. It has already opened three in that period: Cape Town in November 2023, Porto in May 2024 and Barcelona in July 2024. Over the course of this year and next it expects to open in Bahrain, Osaka, Vancouver, Budapest and Abu Dhabi, and further ahead has openings targeted for London, Prague and Riyadh in 2027.