Chicken Shop’s Putney branch has closed. The fast food joint at 79-81 Putney High Street stands stripped bare, mid-refit, its menu boards and signage gone. Word is that Popeyes, another American fried chicken chain, may be taking it over: fast food chicken replaced by fast food chicken.
Three other businesses on the same stretch have closed or changed hands since July. Casa Manolo shut after eight years, one of the street’s longest-running independents gone. The old Bill’s site is becoming a sushi and ramen restaurant, after years of being boarded up. And on nearby Putney Bridge Road, a longstanding pizza cafe is closing at the end of August, blaming rising costs and business rates.
The High Street remains dominated by three types of business: fast food restaurants, vape shops and nail bars. It’s an image in such contrast with Putney’s demographics that the Panorama TV programme is considering making us a test case for what’s gone wrong with Britain’s High Streets. The fourth biggest cluster is charity shops – and that tells its own story: charities get an 80 per cent discount on business rates and are mostly run on volunteers, which is a large part of why they can hang on where other tenants can’t.
A chain like Chicken Shop gets no such discount, but should be better placed than an independent to cover higher costs – Putney was its sixth restaurant in London but despite the High Street’s footfall, the business just wasn’t there to cover the high rents and business rates. If a chain can’t make Putney High Street work, that’s a worse sign than an independent closing on its own.
It will be interesting to see what happens to Popeyes – if it definitely is Popeyes – the company has yet to list Putney on its website. It is identical to Chicken Shop in many ways, but with more sites and deeper pockets: it has shops in Fulham, Hammersmith, Wimbledon, Clapham, Tooting, Richmond and Kingston.
So: Chicken Shop is dead, long live Chicken Shop. If there’s any plus it’s that the unit is likely to be refilled quickly rather than sit, boarded up for years – like so many others.
Sad to report that Dynamo on Putney Bridge Road, closed in Sunday 16th at 2pm. 11 years after opening, citing increased costs as the problem.
Even more of an affront to our High St is the dodgy, garish, Afghan AJ “Phone” Centre next door. Heavens knows what goes on in there.
One of the reasons for the decline in putney high street is the parking. There are very few places to park and the cost of the meter parking bays is way way to high.