Counter culture

It looks like a space ship, and it could attack your wallet, but this is the future of food shopping. Don't be afraid, says Michael Bateman

So this is it – the future of food shopping, an evolutionary leap beyond every deli, fishmonger, butcher and supermarket that has come before. Well, that's if you believe the hype. You see, at Manchester's new Selfridges department store which opened on Friday in the Exchange Square shopping centre, they reckon they've created the perfect food store. If they're right, it could set the tone for other shops across the country.

There's nothing new about food halls. Fortnum & Mason was selling swanky food back in 1707, and Harrods did it as long ago as 1849. But, in the past decade, they've been reinvented. Quality food has always been associated with tradition, but in 1992, when Harvey Nichols added food to its London fashion store, it changed the rules. The food area was, like the rest of the store, hip, modern, cutting-edge. Then came Bluebird, the Conran-owned London rival. And now food halls are cropping up in slick department stores around the UK – in the Leeds, Birmingham and Edinburgh branches of Harvey Nichols, while Selfridges is opening another in Birmingham next year.

Of course, however slick the presentation, none of these stores would work if the food itself wasn't special. That's why Jean-Paul Barat, the Manchester venue's general manager, plus a team of six experts, have been working on it for the past two years, sourcing Alaskan black cod (favoured by Japanese chef Nobu), goose foie gras with truffles, tender Japanese wagyu rib-eye steak and Loch Fyne kippers. In all, they've rustled up 700 exclusive suppliers across the world.

The produce sounds good enough to sell itself, but it gets a helping hand from the most sophisticated presentation and planning I've ever seen. I came along a week before the opening to see the store taking shape. One of the country's boldest architecture firms, Future Systems (you may know it for the high-tech media centre at Lord's cricket ground), has created a 1,500sq m space-age room, all curved white walls and oval glass counters – white so that nothing distracts the eye away from the from the produce itself, and without towering shelves, so you can spot a perfect Balmoral venison haunch from across the room.

When it comes to enticing shoppers, Selfridges pretty much wrote the book. Why do department stores have perfumes near the door? Because back in 1909, Harry Gordon Selfridges realised that the smell would lure people in from the street. Put it into a food context and you get the standard supermarket trick of putting fresh fruit and veg by the door to set a good impression. But this new store ups the ante. Most of the display counters have somewhere for you to sit and eat the goodies you've bought. "It makes it the social centre of the store," says Harvinder Gabhari of Future Systems, "but it's also linked to sales." So you can sit at the oyster bar and wait to meet friends, but the bar is linked to the seafood counter – will food-lovers be able to walk out without buying some of the lobster they've watched being prepared? The same goes for the juice bar, by the fresh fruit, and the coffee bar, by the patisseries. So the food-lover now joins other shoppaholics who have to battle the urge to burn plastic – 100g of pata negra ham will set you back £10.50; a bottle of Chateau Petrus 1997, £575.

The new food halls are no farmers' markets. This is conspicuous consumption, exclusive purchases in posh carrier bags. "In Isetan, the big department store in Tokyo, you can buy an exquisite green honeydew melon for £100. It's fruit as art," enthuses Barat. And they probably won't be putting other shops out of business – no one can afford to desert supermarkets, and you'll still go to your local deli if it sells your favourite treats. Food halls, whether in Selfridges, Harrods or any other store, fit in somewhere else.

"Food is now very fashionable and often follows trends," says a Harvey Nichols spokesperson, "it's a very important part of any fashion store and accounts for 8 to 10 per cent of our sales." So yes, there's carefully constructed temptation at every turn, but I'll bet you'll happily give in, just as you'd treat yourself, given the occasion, in a fashion boutique. "It's theatre," says Barat. "We're selling feelings – sight, smell, taste." *