Not many businesses that start life in shipping containers set a goal to attract 1m visitors to a new venue in a year.
However, BOXPARK is setting that lofty ambition for its first venture outside of London as it prepares to move into the former Cains Brewery Village at the Baltic Triangle. The East London-born company started out 12 years ago and has secured a 15-year lease to take over the historic Canning Hall, which will be transformed into a huge food hall and events destination featuring a large internal space with units set over the ground floor, a small internal mezzanine, and an external terrace.
With three venues across the capital, Liverpool marks its first venture beyond the M25 having assessed 300 potential locations and the ECHO asked chief executive Simon Champion on a visit to the city, why? He said: “Liverpool is rich in terms of culture, in terms of music, sport, which is everything we sort of stand for.
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“It's also about the city. The people of the city are going to energise our BOXPARK so we just think it's the right time to sort of invest, in terms of the Baltic Triangle.”
Since opening its doors in 2011, BOXPARK has created hundreds of jobs offering food, drink and events at its three locations. The firm is investing £3.5m into its new Liverpool site with a view to bringing a further 150 roles to the city.
Mr Champion said Liverpool had been under consideration for a new venue for some time. He said: “We've looked at Liverpool for the last seven years.
“We actually looked at this site a few years ago, and we decided it was a little bit early to come into the site, but now we will see the momentum of the Baltic Triangle and Liverpool, so we just think this is absolutely the right time.” The chief executive conceded however, it wasn’t the perfect time for his firm having missed out on being part of the massive Eurovision party coming to the city in May.
The BOXPARK brand has been shot into the public consciousness over the last few years having become the unofficial venue for England football fans to watch the national team as they went - and ultimately missed out - world and European glory. Scenes of fans throwing pints up in the air as goals went in have become social media fodder, with gifs of celebrations ten a penny.
With Liverpool being one of the UK’s most famous footballing cities, Mr Champion - a football fan himself - said there was more to BOXPARK than just watching the match and wasting a pint. He said: “I think our public perceptions about football because there are some incredible moments, which we want, but we want every customer to feel special.
“Whether they're coming in on a Tuesday night for a pub quiz, we do the biggest pop quiz in London, and have a lot of fun. I think we'd love to be known for all the variety of events we do.
“I think maybe that's the national perception, if you go and see the people in the local environment they'll know the rich variety of events that we do. The national perception is probably a bit more sports bar but that's not what we’re about.”
Mr Champion stressed BOXPARK’s independent credentials and said “don’t see us as a sort of big brand.” The chief executive said the company sought to be an “umbrella” for independent firms and hoped to harness the “momentum of the Baltic.”
He said: “We're about community. People eating together, socialising together, it's about bringing people together. We hope over a million people come here a year, that's our aim.
“The content is effectively the quality of our food and picking our operators. Secondly is our events, we do 600 a year per site.
"That might be grime ballet, it might be bring your own poetry nights. It might be football, fan parks, it might be an NFL screening and things like that.”
BOXPARK isn’t the only new tenant at a historic Baltic location coming down the tracks. A new Merseyrail station, known as Liverpool Baltic, is expected to open in 2025.
Increased public transport provision was an element that made the move to Liverpool so appealing, Mr Champion said: “We like the fact that the train station will come and I don't think the city centre would have worked so well for our brand.
“Having a local train station will make a big difference to us because we have a younger demographic. We want to appeal to everyone.
“We want to morph our venue through the day but on a Friday and Saturday night we want people to be coming to us by train, rather than having a long row of taxis.”
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