The short answer. The fastest unit growth in Asia Pacific and MENA franchising is no longer happening in shopping-mall food courts. It is happening in airports, highway service centres, hospitals, universities and transit interchanges — locations the industry still calls “non-traditional” even though they now absorb a large share of new openings. These sites trade higher fit-out cost and harder staffing for captive, repeat, rent-efficient traffic. The operators winning them are the ones who treat each venue type as a separate format, not as a standard store in an unusual postcode.
Three pressures are pushing brands outward at once.
Mall occupancy costs across the region’s prime centres have climbed faster than average transaction values, compressing what a food-court unit can carry. At the same time, landlords at airports, fuel forecourts, hospitals and campuses have professionalised their commercial teams and now actively tender food, beverage and convenience concessions. And consumer behaviour has spread across the day — the single lunchtime peak that made food courts work has flattened into a longer, thinner demand curve that suits venues with genuine morning and evening traffic.
The result is visible in live deals. Australia’s Soul Origin has built its 400-store plan around airports, drive-throughs and highway service centres, including a co-located format with a national fuel retailer. It is one of the clearest statements yet that the mall is now one channel among several rather than the default.
The most valuable and most contested category. Captive dwell time, high spend per head and near-zero price sensitivity, offset by concession tenders, security-cleared staffing, restricted delivery windows and rent structures tied to passenger throughput.
Increasingly won through partnership with a fuel retailer rather than site by site. A forecourt operator with hundreds of sites can hand a brand a pipeline no property team could assemble independently.
Round-the-clock demand from staff, patients and visitors, with unusually stable volumes. The trade-off is procurement: hospital operators impose nutrition, hygiene and contract terms that many franchise systems are not set up to meet.
Dense, loyal, price-conscious traffic with a hard seasonal cycle. Strong for brands with a low-cost daypart offer; punishing for premium formats that cannot survive a long vacation.
Event-driven and extreme in its peaks. Suited to operators who already run high-volume catering and can staff a surge.
| Venue type | Traffic pattern | Capital intensity | Hardest requirement | Best-fit operator |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Airport terminal | All-day, flight-driven, high dwell | High — full build-out to airport standards | Winning the concession tender | Established travel-retail or catering group |
| Highway service centre | Split peaks, strong evening and weekend | Moderate to high — drive-thru infrastructure | Securing the fuel-retailer relationship | Multi-unit operator with regional logistics |
| Hospital | 24/7, very stable | Moderate — often a fitted shell | Meeting procurement and nutrition standards | Contract caterer or disciplined franchisee |
| University campus | Term-time heavy, long vacations | Low to moderate | Surviving the seasonal trough | Value-format operator with flexible labour |
| Stadium / entertainment | Event spikes | Low — frequently kiosk or counter | Surge staffing | High-volume events caterer |
| Shopping-mall food court | Midday peak, captive | Low to moderate | Absorbing rising occupancy cost | First-time or single-unit franchisee |
Without publishing any brand’s numbers, the structural shifts are consistent across the region:
None of this is a reason to avoid the channel. It is a reason to underwrite it as its own format. Operators who model a highway site on food-court assumptions are the ones who get surprised.
Category matters less than operational shape. Concepts that adapt well share a compact kitchen footprint, a menu that can flex across dayparts, and a service model that does not collapse when a queue forms.
Coffee, bakery and grab-and-go formats move most easily — the same structural advantages VF sets out in its review of specialty F&B franchises across Asia and the Gulf. Full-service casual dining travels least well, which is why most groups entering transit locations do so with a lighter sibling brand rather than their flagship. VF’s comparison of QSR, fast-casual and casual-dining formats is the right starting point for that decision.
Non-food concepts are quietly doing well here too — convenience retail, pharmacy-adjacent services and express personal care all suit high-footfall venues, as covered in VF’s work on service franchise opportunities across Asia Pacific and MENA.
Non-traditional sites reward operators who already hold the venue relationship. That has a direct consequence for deal structure: a master franchisee whose real asset is an airport concession portfolio or a fuel-retail partnership should be evaluated on that pipeline, not only on retail experience.
It also affects territory definition. A conventional territory drawn on a map may accidentally include or exclude an airport that operates under a completely separate commercial regime. Development agreements in this channel increasingly carve out venue-based rights alongside geographic ones — a nuance worth working through against VF’s guide to master franchise, area development and joint venture structures and its practical walkthrough of how to buy a franchise in Asia Pacific and MENA.
Site validation also gets harder, because catchment logic does not apply to a terminal or a ward. Throughput data, dwell time and competitive concession mix replace the residential catchment models used for high-street sites — the kind of analysis covered in VF’s look at franchise location intelligence across Asia Pacific and MENA markets.
Not automatically. They typically deliver higher and more evenly distributed sales, against higher build-out and labour cost. Whether that nets out better depends entirely on the rent structure negotiated and on whether the brand’s format genuinely suits extended trading.
Almost always through a relationship rather than an application — a concession tender run by the airport operator, or a partnership with a fuel retailer or hospital group. Brands rarely hold these directly, which is why the local partner’s venue relationships are often the most valuable thing in the deal.
Australia and the Gulf states are the most developed, with mature airport concession programmes and established forecourt retail. Southeast Asian markets are moving quickly as new terminal capacity and expressway networks come online.
It is rarely the right entry point. These venues demand shift management, surge staffing and contract compliance from day one. A first unit in a conventional location builds the operating muscle; the transit site is better as unit three or four.
Often not. Many systems treat airports, stadiums and other controlled venues as reserved or separately negotiated rights. Confirm this in writing before signing — it is one of the most common gaps found in territory schedules.
The channel is no longer experimental. It is where a growing share of new franchise units in Asia Pacific and MENA will open over the next decade, and the brands building around it are designing formats for it rather than retrofitting. For investors and multi-unit operators, the practical move is to audit which venue relationships you already hold or could realistically build, then look for brands whose format fits those venues — rather than picking a brand first and hunting for sites afterwards.
Operators who want a view of how the wider industry is organising around this shift can review the resources published by the Franchising and Licensing Association Singapore.
Email: info@vffranchiseconsulting.com | Hotline: +84 90 306 54 58
Author: Sean T. Ngo, CEO and Co-founder of VF Franchise Consulting
