It is hardly a revelation that Eataly, the high-end food hall and fun house near Madison Square Park, has caught the public’s attention. At midday and into the evening, the Italian-food megastore is a bedlam of foreign and American tourists, office workers and neighborhood residents crammed together in culinary obsession.
But as Eataly’s second anniversary approaches on Friday, the surprise is that the 58,000-square-foot store has become a phenomenon in the world of retailing and restaurants.
Eataly’s gross revenues for its first calendar year were $70 million, according to Joseph Bastianich and the chef Mario Batali, two of its principal investors.
“That figure was way over their initial projection,” said Malcolm M. Knapp, who heads an independent restaurant consulting firm in New York that bears his name.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: New York Times
