Foodle is bringing back food theatre with its part grocery store part food court

David Loh, the entrepreneur credited for introducing bubble tea to Australia, has doubled down on his Asian mega-store in Highpoint and opened up a second location at The Glen. “We want to introduce Asian food to everyone,” Loh told Inside FMCG.Foodle is inspired by the premium Italian grocery store Eataly, where hospitality and grocery intersect for a seamless culinary experience without the high price tags.In the store, shoppers can expect to find live seafood, a premium butcher with hotpot, Chinese barbeque, a sushi counter, an oyster bar, a bakery, a dumpling factory and fresh produce. Not to mention an estimated 13,000 lines of product.The restaurant-shop emporium is so big that there are maps painted on the floor to guide customers through their Foodle experience. The education piece “Twenty years ago, eating raw fish and rice was probably a bit weird, but now, obviously it’s well accepted into the food culture [in Australia],” stated Loh.Foodle is looking to take the next step to extend consumers’ love of eating Asian cuisine in restaurants and educate them on how to cook it at home.“When you eat at a restaurant, you don’t see the food in its raw form or the raw ingredients… But when you come here, you can see the product in its raw form and the rusticness of it,” explained Loh.“Our aim is to educate too, which is about getting people familiarised with Asian cooking,” he added.Foodle is deliberately designed for customers from all backgrounds with the incorporation of digital tags and with the eventual rollout of QR codes that will link to recipes.According to Loh, there is no typical customer journey at Foodle – some customers come for a meal before their grocery shop while others pop in to pick up a few items and get tempted to stay for the oyster or Teppanyaki bar.“The retirees will come in the morning, have an Asian breakfast, and then they’ll do the shopping,” said Loh.“Or you have the school kids that come in after school, and they can eat some meals – all that is quite valuable for money. We’re not like your restaurant pricing, we are more like your supermarket pricing,” he added.Foodle is a mega-store that is rewriting the rules and expectations of what consumers expect from an Asian grocery store.“Currently, there’s no offering like what Foodle has done – a lot of the industry peers within the Asian grocery sector say, in the last 30 to 40 years, they’ve never seen something like Foodle in terms of this concept of integrating a restaurant,” shared Loh. The theatre of foodFoodle launched its Highpoint location back in 2023 and recently opened the doors to its second location at The Glen.The Foodle team iterated on the Highpoint location to make sure The Glen store offering was more intimate and engaging for customers.The addition of the Teppanyaki stall, noodle-making machine and Korean donut bakery deliver an interactive element and live entertainment for Foodle customers.“All the cooking is done interactively, where you can really, truly see the food being cooked right in front of you,” stated Loh.“A lot of things [at The Glen] are even more intimate, more engaging, more theatre,” he added. “That’s why we had our bakery right in the middle of the store where you can see the pastry chef making the pastries, and then the smell of the baking just pretty much travels along the whole.”Foodle is a first-to-market concept store in Australia with its fully integrated supermarket and food court experience.Right now, word of mouth appears to be the best marketing strategy for Foodle after gaining traction on the Chinese social media platform Little Red Book.While Foodle has its sights set on interstate expansion, it is currently focused on building on its reputation and community in Melbourne.“We have been looking at maybe expanding to the CBD of Melbourne to do sort of a take on Foodle, but in an express format,” concluded Loh.* Further reading: Foodle: the new food emporium capitalising on appetite for Asian cuisine.