The Kommune Kurse strikes again

The former general manager of the failed foodhall Department — a man one vendor tells me has been working 15-hour days, six days a week, to keep it running smoothly — found out about its abrupt closure the same way all of its other staff did. On Sunday, an email from director Jon Perry arrived in his inbox, announcing it was all over. “It’s not been the easiest decision today,” the email begins, “but, after another disappointing weekend of trade and some external factors, unfortunately from tomorrow the doors will close.” Vendors were told they had from 9am until noon on Monday and Wednesday to collect their things from Castle House.

The former general manager — who asks me not to use his name for fear of affecting his future job prospects — had no idea this was coming. After all, it has been less than two months since Department’s glitzy re-launch night, following an expensive renovation. Only a few hours before the email arrived, he had met with a food business he’d hoped would move in soon.

To make matters worse, this isn’t even the first time he’s abruptly lost his job at a foodhall in this very building. He tells me he began working at Department’s predecessor Kommune — whose financial struggles we first revealed in late 2023 — the very first day it opened its doors in March 2019, and was rehired by the team behind Department immediately after Kommune collapsed. This week’s news thus represents six years of his life finally going down the drain. “I’m not a lucky person,” he tells me, mournfully.

One of the former vendors, who also asks not to be named, tells me he was similarly shellshocked. “No one believes a brand-new, shiny venue is going to close,” he says. “The building looks great, they had everything there ready to go. Who wouldn’t believe that’s going to work?” 

Everyone I speak to seems to have a different theory as to why Department has failed. Commenters online argue the city is oversaturated with foodhalls, especially since the enormous Cambridge Street Collective opened last May. A vendor blames poor marketing and a lack of effort from senior management. “You can’t just swing the doors open to a venue that has had that much controversy around it and expect people to come flooding back,” he says. Meanwhile, the former general manager claims a handful of vendors refused to pay Department the rent money they owed — two never paid at all, he alleges, and a third stopped paying a few weeks ago (although he declines to name them, making this difficult to factcheck).

But the only person who can really answer the question of what went wrong at Department is its owner, Jon Perry — who was previously involved in setting up Tamper, and then later in running Kommune. After a bit of trying, I finally get him on the phone.