A creative street food market with revolving traders and up-cycled artwork has opened in an unused carpark in Chiswick.
Junkyard Market at Power Road Studios boasts a shipping container bars, tented seating lined with festoon lights, neon lit sculptures and palm trees made from car tyres.
During the pandemic, the country has seen a boom in outdoor dining, with pop-up and permanent food markets more popular than ever among causal diners looking for something new to eat on the weekends.
The creative behind the project, Michael Femi-Ola, 27, said: “My goal for this project was to try to bring high end street food and drinks with high end service but in a relaxed setting.
“We work with the top street food vendors in the UK, and 50% of our traders are from the local area.
“What makes us unique is the fact that we there is no set plan, every week, our build team is constantly coming up new ideas of how we can upcycle things that were destined for landfill.
“We’ve got three sites and ten launching over the summer.”
The latest wave of rotating food vendors include the Mac Factory from Million Pound Menu on Netflix, luxury plant based hot dogs from Pop Dogs, noodles from TikTok famous Wok Boy and ethically sourced burgers from Tounge ‘N’ Cheek.
Festival-goers will recognise the arty atmosphere of the site as lead designers also created sets for Boomtown & Glastonbury.
Femi-Ola originally started the concept in Norwich in August 2020 after realising the future of outdoor events during the pandemic.
Less than a year later, Femi-Ola and his team now see over 6000 diners arrive every weekend in Norwich.
Every Junkyard Market site runs an optional charity donation with every meal purchase.
So far, £4,000 has been raised in Chiswick with proceeds going to The Upper Room, a charity that helps feed and educate the homeless of west London.
Junkyard Market uses attentive staff and fast table service to separate themselves from the competition.
Credit – Junk Yard Market
Femi-Ola, who started running large scale student events ten years ago said: “Your food comes out super quick, the drinks are coming out super quick, and you can just worry about chatting and catching up with people.
“We spent about three months trying to find the right space in west London.
“Hopefully it’ll be an exciting future for us in the area.”
The Chiswick site is family friendly, open from 5pm on Fridays, midday on the weekends and closes at 10pm.
Chiswick Junkyard will trade for seven weeks with ambitions to stay over the summer until September.
Featured image credit – Junkyard Market Chiswick
