The Troubling Economics of Food Halls

What lies beneath the Instagrammable veneer of the food hall? In at least some cases, a perfect capitalistic machine

Photos by Tom O’Connor

Kendall Dix had a dream. Or, really, he had a nightmare, one familiar to any line cook: He woke at night, clammy, feeling the years slipping past, knowing that soon enough he’d be that sweaty old man still trapped by the brutal economics of a kitchen job. Then, in 2015, he met with a company seeking food stalls for a soon-to-open retail space.

The head of that company, Will Donaldson, planned to revive an iconic New Orleans public market, St. Roch, offering fresh foods alongside a very of-the-moment addition, small stalls featuring up-and-coming culinary talent. Talent like Dix, who began to churn through ideas. Eventually, he settled on what he thought was a winner: bagels and smoked fish. Then he saw the terms of the lease.

But what really is a food hall? How does it work — and who does it work for? That, I think, we’ve never really established.

This is, yes, a food hall story — another food hall story, after we’ve tumbled through snarky shots at their ubiquity into defensive listicles insisting that some food halls are still…