Food halls have been popping up here, there and everywhere across Greater Manchester - all hoping to emulate the success of Manchester’s Mackie Mayor and Altrincham Market.

The recent trend gives small independent eateries a chance to flog tasty dishes to punters gathered in a trendy-looking location. With so many diets, cuisines, allergies, likes and dislikes, you can understand why food halls are a popular meet up spot.

Given the cost of taking over a traditional high street unit with overheads and business rates, the idea of filling a space at a food hall is an enticing lower-cost prospect for traders.

It is now a tried and tested method of reinvigorating town centres that have become a shadow of their former selves. Altrincham is looked at as a standard bearer for town centre regeneration, and that started with a food hall.

The arrival of the town centre venue helped transform a once-tired district into a vibrant destination bustling with shoppers, revellers and day trippers. Just over a decade ago, the leafy suburb on the edge of Greater Manchester was becoming run down, with low footfall and shuttered shops.

The food hall sparked new life into the town that is still there today. When people came to the town to drink and eat at the revived market, soaking up the atmosphere as they chowed down woodfired pizzas and bao buns, the retail sector followed suit.

Trendy restaurants, cafes and shops all started popping up in the empty commercial units on the high street. Now Altrincham sees thousands of visitors walking the streets at the weekend, visiting the plethora of bars and shops the town has to offer.

There are already successful food halls operating in the city centre, with Mackie Mayor and Society always packed with people most of the day - not just on weekends and Friday nights.

Elsewhere in the city-region there are examples of successes that don’t benefit from the huge traffic of people that Manchester’s centre welcomes every day.

Salford’s Lowry shopping centre is largely quiet when you stroll through, until you get to the side which overlooks the Quays. Kargo MKT attracts punters from all over the city-region and from further afield.

It offers a food and drink hub featuring 20 kitchens, space for 400 guests, a 2,000 sq ft outdoor terrace, five shipping container kitchens and a bar looking out onto Old Trafford and the Imperial War Museum.

It has only been open for a couple of years and it is already making a name for itself in the city - with many choosing to dine there before heading to a show at the theatre or taking a trip around the museum or Salford Quays.

Stockport’s Produce Hall has been plying its trade for a little longer, having opened in 2019. Like many other locations operating as food halls, Stockport saw fit to transform a Grade-II listed building into a hub for food traders and a bar serving local craft beers.

Just last year the long-awaited Egyptian Room, the final part of a multi-million pound renovation of Oldham’s Old Town Hall building on Parliament Square, opened as a food hall. The Grade-II listed setting brought together Oldham’s historical splendour and contemporary dining, food stalls and a bar are set into the Egyptian-inspired architecture of the 180-year-old building.

Travelling north from the city centre, Bolton, Bury and Radcliffe markets all offer a food hall style feel in their establishments. Despite still having their traditional markets, each town has adopted this food hall style table setting with a plethora of options available to shoppers and townsfolk.

In Wigan, there is Feast at The Mills, which sits in the shadow of a massive redevelopment of one of the borough’s historic mills.

Punters from the locals area sample the outdoor venue’s offering of food, drinks and live music at Eckersley Mills. The live music addition is a nod to the town’s past iconic nightclub status during the Wigan Pier era.

The venue will eventually move indoors when the huge redevelopment at Eckersley Mills moves forwards.

But these are just a few examples of food halls - there are many exciting plans on the horizon.

Here is a list of food halls that are currently in the works…

Later this year, Manchester city centre is getting an all-new food hall, which will become home to five kitchens all under one ‘house’.

House of Social will open on First Street, near the HOME theatre, showcasing a range of independent kitchens that can serve food from breakfast right through until the evening. Led by Vita Group and Jake Atkinson, who has previously worked as the operations manager at Mackie Mayor, The Picturedrome and Altrincham Market, the food hall will span 12,000sq ft of space across two design-led levels.

Given the venue will be within walking distance to Oxford Road and Deansgate-Castlefield stations, the footfall potential is bound to be high.

It will be located below the new Vita Student First Street accommodation - comprising 100 apartments and 576 bedrooms.

Market Street will soon be home to a high-end food hall in what developers hope will be ‘a massive lift for this part of Manchester’.

The former Debenhams department store, housed in the Grade-II listed Rylands Building, is being redeveloped into a food and drink, retail and office block by refurbishing the existing 1920s structure - and adding a four-storey extension to the roof.

Market Place Food Halls will occupy the ground floor of the Rylands, signing a 15-year lease — something Paul Hodgkiss, AM Alpha manager, called ‘a clear vote of confidence in the quality and ambition of our vision’.

The Rylands is not expected to reopen until late 2026, and Market Place’s website said it’s planning to open in spring 2027.

The vision for a £100m re-development of the centre of Prestwich includes a new food and market hall and a village square.

A previous public consultation conducted by the council’s development partners Muse said that the project should take inspiration from Manchester city centre’s Mackie Mayor.

The latest concept images show such a development with Muse saying they plan a ‘food hall for local food operators and communal seating that spills out onto the village square’.

They said the village square has been flexibly designed so it provides space for pop-up events like markets, food festivals, art exhibitions and live performances

Denton will soon get a new food hall, with developers aiming to make the town a place where people can ‘live, work and play’.

The approved plan - for 'Hatters Square' - will see the four retail units on Jubilee Square replaced with a huge food hall. Hatters Square Limited has set out its vision to 'revive the town centre high street'.

The food hall will include a performance stage, a mezzanine floor, a private event space and a feature staircase. The 'greenhouse' on the first floor will offer a unique dining experience with views over the nearby Victoria Park.

The extensions to the building comprise the first floor glasshouse at the back and a second floor 'saw-toothed' extension.

An old night club that was once a major hub for party-goers in the heyday of ‘Staly Vegas’ will be transformed into a brand-new food hall.

Rififi, which closed more than a decade ago, was one of many nightlife venues in Stalybridge that earned its nickname likening it to Las Vegas. But under a new lease of life, the new food hall on the corner of Market Street and Waterloo Road will feature a 1940s themed ‘secret bar’ and a jazz bar/restaurant.

The venue will be named ‘The Palace’ to honour the building’s past as Palace Cinema - before it became a nightclub.

The new food hall underneath 21 proposed apartments is one step closer to becoming a reality for Hyde town centre.

Applicants Copperleaf Group Ltd submitted an outline application for the food hall on the old Woolworths site which would be 710 sqm in size with the first floor cut back to create a large mezzanine for diners across two storeys. The hall would support a variety of small, medium and large stalls arranged around a central seating area within the building off Market Place.

A commercial kitchen and toilet block would be provided on a mezzanine area, in addition to seating which overlooks the main entrance