food "court"

My son's girlfriend has started a small cupcake business and it is doing very well. Her immediate goal is just making money for college, but the larger goal is to someday own her own sweetshop. So, I get to thinking about this and my own cooking interests and an idea on steroids appears in my feeble mind. Gonna throw it out here for whatever comments it might garner. If it doesn't belong on this forum, tell me that. Maybe it's been done elsewhere and that's OK too.

Foodies, I've observed tend to be generalists, that is, if they're serious about barbecue they may well be serious about charcuterie and desserts and heritage foods and gardening and . . . you know what I mean. So what if an entrepreneur started a group of boutique type food shops in, say, a strip mall? Or, it could be done as a co-op by the shop owners themselves. Say a butcher offering prime meats, a sausage maker, a bread baker, a patisserie, a green grocer, a couple ethnic grocers, and maybe a kitchen store all in one location. I know I'd be in pig heaven in such a place.

Living in a small town an hour drive from a sizable city, I get frustrated when I want to do something like kim-chi and I have to substitute sambol olek for Korean chili paste and just drop the idea of daikon radish entirely. Living in a rural area I can get beef, pork, elk, rabbit and a few other meats from the local slaughter house, but I'm SOL when it comes to anything more exotic or something exotic that is not in the meat or barbecue fields.

Comments, please?

I'd lose my mind (as well as my life's savings) going to a place like that...great idea Tom.

HistoricFoodie wrote: Most of the larger cities have things like that. New York's Chelsea Maket comes to mind, as does the Reading Central Market in Pennsylvania, and Quincy Market in Boston. Cincinatti has a set-up exactly as you describe; I forget the name of it right now, but it's a culinary shopping mall. The question is, can smaller cities and towns support such an effort. Odds are they can't. unfortunately. Not when even the culinary box stores can't make it within those demographics. Especially as they'd have to compete with the internet. A shame, really. But the reality is, finances trump just about everything, and the ROI just isn't there in smaller cities.

In Texas, most are in small towns, usually on weekends, mostly selling off the tailgate or a card table and very seasonable.
At this time, there are a few people selling on the roadside, mostly watermelons and cantaloupe with a few tomato and cucumbers being sold.