The first Kitchen by Spinneys opened on the lower ground floor of Dubai Mall. The address gave the supermarket operator a chance to put prepared food in front of shoppers already out for the day. It also presented a design problem. Leena Al Jawad, then head of design at Spinneys Dubai, described a unit with a difficult shape, ceiling height restrictions and limited available power. A retailer could see the appeal of the address and still have to ask whether the space could deliver the service that justified it. Dubai Mall directory · Leena Al Jawad’s project interview
Spinneys’ UAE disclosures also describe a different location decision. In 2021, it opened a Dubai supermarket alongside another grocer, then reported how the store traded against its original study. Read together, the openings show why a retail team needs to specify the customer trip, check the actual unit against it and preserve the forecast so it can explain where the business diverged from the plan. Spinneys offering memorandum
A food hall gives the customer a different reason to stop
When Spinneys announced the Dubai Mall opening in May 2024, CEO Sunil Kumar presented the concept as an opportunity to expand the retailer’s prepared food offering in the UAE. Al Jawad traced the format back to the company’s supermarket deli counters. The team was taking one reason customers already came to Spinneys and giving it premises of its own. A visit could end in a café seat or with food packed to take away. Those two uses would shape how people moved through the same unit. Spinneys launch disclosure
A site team can translate that proposition into an observable customer trip. Picture a shopper with ten minutes before meeting someone elsewhere in the mall. Can they see from the corridor what can be picked up straight away? Can they reach the till without joining the queue for a made-to-order item? A second shopper wants to sit down with family. Where can they see the seating, and can the group wait together while someone orders? These hypothetical trips give the designer something to test on a floor plan. They also help a leasing team see why two units with similar area or frontage could have very different value.
Al Jawad said customer flow was central to the Dubai Mall design. The team wanted the preparation of food to be visible where possible and the route through the space to feel comfortable. Her description of ceiling height, unit shape and power availability puts those ambitions in the context of the actual premises. The project interview describes challenges the design and consultant teams addressed. It gives no itemised cost of those solutions. TGP project interview with Al Jawad
Spinneys UAE’s May 2024 launch reel shows the entrance at the time of opening. The brand directed readers to that account in its own launch coverage. Spinneys launch coverage
The supermarket alongside a rival
In its April 2024 offering memorandum, Spinneys described a Dubai supermarket it opened in April 2021 in the same location as another grocery retailer. The company left the site unnamed in the example. It reported 21,000 square feet of gross leasable area and 14,000 square feet of selling area, and said the store was adapted for top-up shopping. That is the trip a household makes to replenish selected items between larger shops. The disclosure describes a different opening from the standalone food hall at Dubai Mall.
The nearby competitor is a reason to investigate what shoppers need. If shoppers already come to the location for groceries, a prospective tenant can observe what draws them in, when they arrive and where they head after leaving. The same traffic may prove difficult to win if both retailers offer similar baskets, hours and convenience. The site team should identify a difference a shopper can experience, such as a shorter route from parking to fresh produce or a quicker trip to pick up dinner ingredients. Then it can ask whether enough customers would make that trip often enough.
The company’s July 2020 feasibility study projected a five-year internal rate of return of 29% and a payback period of 2.7 years for the unnamed store. The report’s trading comparison is more concrete. In 2022 the store recorded AED 48 million in retail revenue against AED 50 million forecast. In 2023 it recorded AED 63 million against AED 53 million forecast. The 2021 comparison carries a timing difference. The forecast assumed operations from January, while the actual figures began with the April opening. The disclosed trade profit figures also ran ahead of forecast in 2022 and 2023. The return and payback figures describe the investment case at approval. Calculating the realised return would require the actual cash flows. Spinneys offering memorandum, pages 11–12 and 123–124
For an expansion team, the useful habit is to keep the original approval model and build a separate explanation of the differences as results come in. Start with the opening date. Then look at transaction count, basket value and the product mix. If online orders are assigned to the store, separate them from the trips that went through the front door before attributing outperformance to location. Spinneys reported 30% e-commerce penetration for the unnamed store in 2023, which makes that channel distinction especially pertinent. The example is one store selected by the company for disclosure. An internal review should add other openings, including those that missed their targets, before the business changes its site criteria.
How to test a promising Dubai address
Start at the approach to the unit. A count for the entire destination is useful context, but the relevant observation is the stream of people passing the entrance when the business expects to sell. For a takeaway-led food concept, observe whether the approach gives people time to recognise the offer and decide to stop. For a neighbourhood supermarket, follow the route from nearby housing, parking or another frequent stop and look for friction on the way back with bags. Record the time and conditions each time. A crowded weekend can coexist with a quiet weekday lunch, and those visits carry different implications for staffing and production.
Bring someone responsible for running the format into the inspection before settling on the layout. Ask them to trace a delivery from the loading area through receiving to storage, then walk the customer route from entry to payment. Check how staff would replenish the display during the busiest period. The location decision can change if two movements need to use the same narrow passage or a proposed queue occupies the part of the frontage shoppers rely on to understand the offer. A design drawing with those routes marked is easier to discuss than a generic assurance that the unit will work.
Get evidence for the physical assumptions that can change the cost or opening date. For prepared food, ask the project team to match the equipment list to confirmed electrical capacity and the layout to the landlord’s delivery and fit-out constraints. Identify the party that must complete any enabling works and the point when that party can confirm a handover. If several assumptions are open, keep a dated base case and a later opening case. Trading starts after the space is ready, while certain costs can start earlier depending on the deal. The difference belongs in the cash plan.
| What the site needs to do | What to observe or request | What could change the decision |
|---|---|---|
| Reach the shopper on the intended trip | Counts at the frontage by day and hour and a walkthrough from the main approaches | The customers expected to buy rarely pass the unit at the right time |
| Serve different visits during the same rush | A marked plan for browsing, ordering, paying and sitting or leaving | One queue occupies the space needed for another trip |
| Support production and replenishment | Equipment schedule, confirmed capacity and a timed walk from receiving to storage | A material redesign or works package changes cost and opening assumptions |
| Add sales to the local network | A map of existing store and delivery coverage plus a plan to compare local sales after opening | Much of the projected demand appears to move from an existing branch |
Put a price on the weakest assumption
Consider a fictional prepared-food unit with AED 90,000 in monthly site costs in a simplified model. Suppose each transaction leaves AED 18 after its variable costs. The site needs 5,000 monthly transactions to cover those costs, roughly 167 a day over a 30-day month. If the retained amount falls to AED 15 because the basket is smaller or more food is wasted, the same unit needs 6,000 transactions, or 200 a day. Those inputs illustrate the sensitivity of the decision. The calculation excludes initial fit-out and the timing of cash outflows, which require separate treatment before a lease decision.
The next step is to allocate those transactions to specific trading periods. If the forecast depends heavily on a brief lunch window, the team needs to check how many orders the unit can physically finish and hand over during that window. Include time to replenish popular products and cover any line that builds around payment. A site can appear to have enough weekly demand and still lose the sales that are hardest to replace because the busiest minutes are already full.
Run the same exercise against the existing network. A new store might improve service in an underserved Dubai neighbourhood, shorten a delivery route or pick up a different kind of customer trip. It might also move orders that another branch already serves. Before opening, agree how to compare branch and delivery performance in the overlapping area. After opening, check whether the combined business has grown and whether the improvement came with the expected labour and delivery costs. A site profit report and a network review answer different questions.
Carry the format forward without copying the floor plan
Spinneys subsequently reported a second Kitchen location at Dubai’s Creek Beach in the fourth quarter of 2024. Its first-quarter 2025 disclosure describes the Creek Beach site as combining The Kitchen with a small grocery section. A prepared-food customer in a mall and a resident picking up dinner and a few essentials can use parts of the same concept differently. That difference gives a retail team a reason to revisit the space allocated to seating, chilled grocery or pickup at each address. Spinneys first-quarter 2025 disclosure
A site approval should end with a short written account of the trip the store is designed to win, the premises and delivery conditions it needs, and the sales assumptions carrying the investment. Give each unresolved condition an owner and a decision date. Keep that version when the site opens. When a second location comes up, the team can compare what the first unit needed to deliver with what it actually delivered, then decide which elements to repeat and which the next Dubai address will have to earn for itself.
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