Dandenong Market has been the heart and soul of the City for more than 150 years. Home to more than 200 family owned businesses, the Market offers a rich and vibrant shopping experience where people can engage in a shared cultural exchange. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted traditional shopping behaviour and is proving to reshape retail as we know it.
The future plan for the Market draws on analysis completed over several years. Ms Jennifer Hibbs, General Manager, Dandenong Market said, “These exciting changes ensure the Dandenong Market provides an engaging customer experience while remaining true to its traditional working Market roots and continues to remain relevant.” The future plans will evolve over time in response to emerging consumer and retail trends as well as customer feedback.
Some of these exciting changes includes:
Improving the overall mix
Maintaining a critical mass of traders remains a priority to ensure competitive pricing and offer a breadth of options which customers have come to expect at the market. This also increases the visitor attraction beyond the local community making it a destination for the whole region.
Updating the Fresh Food Layout
The fruit and vegetable offer is the Market’s strongest anchor. The Market has identified there is still plenty of opportunity to improve the customer experience in one of the most popular areas of the Market.
Improving the Meat and Fish Offer
The Meat Hall is extremely busy at peak times and requires a little tweaking to improve the traffic flow and range. This will greatly improve the customer experience.
Expanding the Pantry
There is a real opportunity to strengthen the Market’s reputation for being a culturally diverse market and create a genuine point of difference to Melbourne’s other markets and food precincts. There is also an opportunity to increase the representation of eastern European deli-lines, Afghani, Middle Eastern and Indian specialty foods all of which are likely to appeal to our current customers and to the wider foodie audience of the Market. It also provides an opportunity to incorporate a greater representation of locally produced artisanal foods that reflects the interests of new audiences.
Emphasising the Market Square experience
In recent years, the Market has developed a reputation as a place to find an interesting and unique range of authentic street foods. “We propose expanding the Market’s hawker food offer and integrating Market Square into The Bazaar shopping precincts,” Ms Hibbs explains. “The intent is to create an authentic street food precinct where ready to eat foods, cook serve options and open kitchens make food the hero and the theatre of food becomes part of the customer experience with colour, movement and the aromas of cooking adding a layer of authenticity to the food offering.”
Reimagining the Bazaar
“Our vision for The Bazaar is a space which provides a bright, vibrant, and memorable customer experience with a sense of exploration, discovery and whimsy; an eclectic mix of goods not normally found together in one place that caters for hobbyists, enthusiasts, those with special interests and the child in us all,” Ms Hibbs said. “We aim to improve the permeability from Market Square to The Bazaar, blending the food and general merchandise offers and improving the overall customer amenity and experience.
Adding a Family Zone
This process has already begun when the Market installed a largescale playground in The Bazaar. This was done to anchor the space and support a new, yet to be created, children’s retail precinct.
“To complement the playground, we are on the lookout for a new food kiosk to further strengthen the attraction of the playground for family shoppers and help anchor the new children’s retail precinct in this corner of The Bazaar,” Ms Hibbs said. “This is an important initiative for the Market as 30% of all Market customers are regularly shopping with young children.”
Starting up night time economy
The opportunity to better use the site and activate the Market precinct in the evenings is something that not only benefits Dandenong Market but the Dandenong community as a whole. “With hawker food now a core component of the Market’s retail offer, extending activity into the evenings is important to ensuring our hawkers’ ongoing viability so we’ll be relaunching the Night Market in January 2023,” Ms Hibbs explained.
The future is bright for Dandenong Market and all parties – customers and traders have a lot to look forward to.
To learn more visit website www.dandenongmarket.com.au, or email info@dandenongmarket.com.au
To read more stories like this read the latest Talking Business September 2022.
