Urban Collective was founded by three of the most experienced leaders in the UK food hall and market hall sector. Together, we combine decades of operational expertise with strategic insight shaped through some of the country’s most ambitious regeneration projects. That blend of industry knowledge and hands-on delivery is what makes us different.

For years, our team worked across the UK running, advising on and improving food halls, market halls and independent-led destinations. Along the way, we became close collaborators, sharing ideas, supporting each other’s projects and refining approaches to complex, multi-tenanted venues. Eventually, one question kept resurfacing: When are we going to do something together?

That conversation led to the creation of Next Phase in 2023. In just two years, it has become the UK’s leading specialist consultancy for food halls, markets and independent-led developments. Through Next Phase, we’ve helped councils and private developers across the country to create new destinations, strengthen existing ones and bring life back into vacant and underused buildings.

But consultancy was only part of the picture. Again and again, our clients faced the same challenge: finding a credible operator. National players focused on major cities. Smaller independents lacked the capacity to run complex regeneration projects. The operator gap was clear.

Urban Collective is how we close it. We take everything we’ve learned from running our own venues and advising on dozens more, and put it into practice to deliver the next generation of independent-led, experience-first destinations.