Stan Liacos runs one of the greatest icons in Melbourne, the 141-year-old Queen Victoria Market. Here he discusses what it’s like maintaining the markets’ authenticity while keeping up with the modern convenience economy and the customer’s changing expectations. IRW: What’s it like running a Melbourne institution that’s more than 140 years old? Stan Liacos: The markets have been around since 1879 and they’re state and national heritage-listed. It’s 141 years of age. It’s an honou
honour to be in charge of an icon, but one of the challenges is that there are a number of heritage protections that make it complex and having underneath former cemeteries adds complications. I tell people it’s iconic, which is basically code for everything needs heritage approval, but it’s also much loved, which is code that everyone has a bloody opinion!
IRW: Hang on, did you say there’s a cemetery under the markets?
SL: There are former cemetery lands underneath parts of the market, which means that our ability to refurbish and redevelop has an added constraint. It’s simply one of the facts of our precinct. It’s a quirky fact and something that we have to work within.
It is a much-loved precinct and it’s had many iterations in its 141 years, so it’s gone from being a retail market in the mid-1900s to being a wholesale market and probably from around 1970s onwards, it went back to being a retail market. It’s the largest market by a mile in Australia. We have upwards of 600 day traders and about 150 on the books for our night markets.
Over the next five to 10 years, we intend to significantly refurbish and develop our much-needed new facilities to help run a better market, but over the next five years, we’ll be on a journey of reinventing and rejuvenating parts of the market. Some of the parts of the market, in a retail sense, continue to operate well and remain vibrant; some other parts however, have some challenges, and they will be a focus of added effort.
Where we have the challenges is around the traditional market activity – the parts where people set up daily and pack down every night. Most of that is general merchandise and some of it is showing some elements of financial strain.
Other challenges are that we’re incurring are increased urban congestion, which makes it challenging for Victorians to visit more often. We basically have antiquated operational facilities, which make the cost of running the market higher than it should be.
One of our opportunities, however, is that we are on the edge of the Melbourne CBD and inner Melbourne is continuing to explode in terms of population numbers. The challenge, however, is to reorient parts of the market to better capture a changed inner-city demographic in Melbourne.
Melbourne has changed and Melbournians have changed. It’s not the same city it was 30 or 40 years ago, so our holy grail is to retain the authenticity of a great historic market but to better adapt to meet the expectations of a modern customer and tourist. We’ve got some smaller more affluent households in the inner ring, but the people are very time-poor and in a fickle way, they can be enticed by more convenient offerings. Supermarkets are springing up everywhere around us and they weren’t really a threat 30 years ago, but they are today. The inner-city resident of today is arguably more affluent and busier and operating on a different clock which is not necessarily well-suited for us to capture their expenditure.
IRW: The Queen Victoria Market do have an impressive offering, though.
SL: The scale of our markets is unparalleled. We have 30 butchers, we have 45 fruit and veg providers, we have 10 fishmongers – probably only Sydney Fish Market could compete with the scale of our fish site – and we have 30 deli hall traders. Essentially, there’s great choice and great prices.
We also have some dining hospitality, which is ready and primed for refurbishment. It’s not one of our strengths at the moment, but it’s an area of improvement. We also have more than 300 general merchandise market traders and they serve our strong tourism market. The food component of our market has a greater reliance on locals, while the merchandise has a greater reliance on tourism.
We’re continuing to attract a bit over nine million visits a year and a recent area of growth for us has been the development of our fabulous Wednesday night markets. We average under 30,000 every Wednesday night. Our night markets are important because they attract a different demographic and they’re broadening our customer base. It’s a substantially younger demographic – 20- to 35-year-olds – but we’re also attracting a large family audience. You’d think those audiences wouldn’t mix, but they do!
It’s different to our day market, which is generally an older demographic, 35- to 50-year-olds – they’re the core average day demographic. Day market concentrates on shopping, whereas the night market is essentially offering hospitality and leisure.
IRW: Tell me about the work you’re doing to extend trading hours.
SL: This week, we’re confirming the intention to move out an hour or two each day of the week to encourage a slightly later start time, so the net hours for most of our traders should not be that different, but we are trying to push it out to better suit a busier inner Melbournian. Our market research is saying we’ve lost customers because we’re closing too early, particularly on weekends.
In the big scheme of things, the hours are not that different, but they essentially do two things – they move the hours out and they also smooth across the days that we’re open to make it easier for us to promote hours. At the moment, we’ve got different times on different days and it makes it impossible for us to convey that simply to our customers.
Every day during the week, the markets will be open ’til 3pm and on weekends, 4pm. It’s currently 2pm and 3pm respectively. In the big scheme of things, it’s not radical and I’m disappointed that the hours have not changed for some 20 years. I suppose as a relatively new CEO, I’ve inherited the need to make slow changes. I wish they had been moved gently in the past. The long-term aspiration is to certainly move hours later, but it is important to try and do it in harmony with the trader community.
You have to remember that we don’t have franchises, they’re all individual small businesses, so lifestyle considerations are important but perhaps relevant to more franchise companies. It’d be fair to say that some of our traders are struggling with the suggestion of change. Some in the market and in the community feel a sense of nostalgia which makes it difficult to embrace change. The harsh reality is that we need to retain our history and heritage but move forward with the times.
For example, I too am nostalgic for corner shop milkbars but regrettably, they don’t exist anymore. I too am nostalgic for the great music of the ’70s and ’80s, but my daughters keep reminding me that I have to move with the times.
IRW: The markets have just teamed up with Yourgrocer. Can you tell me about what that partnership involves?
SL: The best thing is to have a customer here. The second best thing is to have a customer buy from you, but the worst thing is to have a customer not come and not buy from you, so our move towards establishing online grocery sales and delivery with Yourgrocer is simply about providing the customer with choice. At the moment, they don’t have an online choice here and the supermarkets are running rampant, so we commenced the first stage in with Yourgrocer and 25 traders, but we hope to move towards about 100 within the next three to five years.
IRW: Tell me about the development of String Bean Alley.
SL: It’s Melbourne’s newest laneway, comprising 25 converted shipping containers. It’s fully leased and proving very popular and it’s evidenced by the pedestrian numbers, but importantly, trader demand. There are a lot of traders wanting a space there which is the ultimate sign of popularity. It was a half complete laneway for six years and I was determined to help the team realise the vision that they had set out. We’ve basically brought in the containers, converted them and then leased them out all in the space of six months. Our laneways are one of our competitive strengths in Melbourne and I suppose we’re playing to that theme.
They’re all general merchandise stores anchored by two cafes at either end. The vast majority are comprised of locally made, high-end market products, including a barber. Every Melbournian male has a beard these days!
IRW: How have supermarkets posed as a threat to the markets?
SL: Supermarkets are the main competitors for our food traders, but certainly not our merchandise traders. It’s not so much that the supermarkets themselves are competitors, it’s mostly the convenience economy that has been created through supermarkets – their long hours of trade and easy access for cars. Years ago, there wasn’t really a convenience economy. Shops closed early and that’s what society was – you didn’t have a choice. But in Melbourne, there’s a supermarket on every corner these days and that has to be part of the competition equation.
There are alternatives within easy reach wherever you look and in many aspects of our daily lives. It’s interesting, some of our food traders think that entities such as Costco and Aldi are probably proving more competitive for us than your more standard Woolies and Coles – there’s a Costco not far away from us. When you go to Costo, you don’t get anywhere near the range that we offer, but you can go buy big amounts of cheese and fish and meat. The quality doesn’t compare to our market, but the prices and size offering does.
IRW: But there has been a lot of talk lately about how millennials in particular have a real desire for experiences now. Is that something that you’ve seen?
SL: We’re probably experiencing it with our night market. People are coming here for the experience. There are restaurants, cafes and bars all over the city, but they’re coming in big numbers every Wednesday because of the overall vibrant experience of food, leisure and entertainment.
By day, we retain a very loyal base of customers who want the more gritty, authentic, small business offering, unsurpassed with choice. I look around Melbourne and so many supermarkets and shopping centres are clamouring to convey the market experience. To me, it’s only through the use of the words that they’re trying to emulate us and admittedly, it’s an aspect that we continue to struggle with to know how to truly fight back to regain market share.
The only way we’ll do that is through physical refurbishment to make the precinct more appealing and comfortable and by having a vibrant events atmosphere. For us, the most exciting part of our redevelopment plan is the development of a new square adjacent to our market, which will go a long way towards consolidating a precinct being driven by experiences and events.
At the moment, we’re currently developing new carparks to replace the cars that are currently parked next to the market at street level. Once our new carparks open, the City of Melbourne will work with us to transform the existing carpark into Melbourne’s new square. It will really consolidate the precinct as a large gathering space, which goes a long way to competing with supermarkets that are not playing in that space – arts, entertainment and promenading and leisure. That’s what a great square can do. The target would be for that to be developed in three years. It’s linked to how we can capture the 20,000 to 30,000 new residents that we will have as Melbourne continues to explode in a high-density apartment way. The square will be vibrant, but it’s also an area of intended respite for the growing number of tower residents in the inner-city.