Food & Fashion popping up around Toronto

Krystal Ferroni

Abstract:
The city of Toronto is a hub for numerous types of pop-
up shops, which thrive off of being temporary. The
research conducted examines 117 fashion and food-
based pop-up shops located within the city of Toronto.
We use multiple hypotheses conducted by Patterson and
silver (2015), which include rising tide, urbanism, and
the perfect audience. This hypothesis helps to explain
certain components in our research just as the “perfect
audience” hypothesis helps explain why certain pop-up
shops are placed where they are throughout Toronto.
Similarly, our research findings include discovering
patterns of clustering and isomorphic trends between
fashion based pop-up shops within the city.
Key words: Pop-up Shop, Isomorphism, Spatial
Analysis, Toronto,
Introduction
The city of Toronto is home to many pop-up shops, all
year round. They never really last more than a few
weeks and are continuously popping up all over the
downtown area. These pop-up shops range from selling
things such as fashion apparel to being a marketing stunt
for big brands. What sets these shops apart from regular
shops is the concept of them being temporary, thus
popping up for a short period of time than shutting down
not so long after. Keeping that in mind, the only type of
pop-up shops researched in this report is defined
specifically as “a retail store that is opened temporarily
to take advantage of a trend or a seasonal product.
Demand for products sold in pop-up retail is typically
short-lived.” (Investopedia, 2017)
The focus of our research is analyzing pop-up shops
within the city of Toronto throughout the entirety of
2017. More specifically, the only pop-up shops covered
are those that sell either food or fashion/apparel
(clothing, beauty products, accessories). Additionally,
there were a few trends that kept popping up, which a
numerous amount of the Toronto pop-up shops all
shared.
Background
According to Harris (2015), pop-up shops became
widely popular in trendy cities such as Toronto,
especially after the 2008 economic crisis hit and there
was an increase of vacant properties. To businesses and
brands, it was smart financial move during the
recession, as costs of renting these spaces were cheap.
Furthermore, not only are pop-ups a good investment for
brands, as the idea itself thrives on a temporary, short-
lived basis. (Harris, 2015)
Similarly, Patterson and Silver (2015) created three
hypotheses, which help in the explanation of questions
that were thought of throughout the research process of
Toronto pop-up shops. Patterson and Silver (2015) three
hypothesis include “Rising Tide: arts growth will
parallel general economic growth. (4) Urbanity: arts
growth will occur in urbanized areas. (5) Perfect
Audience: arts growth will occur in neighborhoods with
demographic groups most likely to consume the arts”.
(Patterson and Silver, 2015, pg. 69) Additionally, the
perfect audience hypothesis is what this brief will be
focusing on mostly. Keeping that in mind, there are
spots around the City of Toronto that cater exclusively
to pop-ups, such as This Open Space at Yonge and St.
Claire. All these spaces take advantage of current
fashion or food trends currently within the city, for
example, cheesecake on a stick from Heirloom is
currently a huge success at The Concept space within
Yorkdale where the business has rented out a spot to
serve up their trendy dish for a short period of time,
which would be due to the perfect audience hypothesis
proposed by Patterson and Silver (2015).
Methods
One of the biggest sources for finding reliable,
information about Toronto pop-up shops was BlogTO (a
popular website focused on Toronto culture). BlogTO
even categorized some of the pop-ups by the month,
which made the research more easily accessible. After
creating a list of all pop-up shops which fit our

Culture, Creativity, and Cities Capstone Course | Dept. of Sociology | University of Toronto – Scarborough
1265 Military Trail, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4 Canada
 definition, we decided to narrow them down and focus
specifically on the two categories of pop-up’s within the
city (Fashion & Food), as there was an excessive
amount of data to include in this assignment. It also
wouldn’t be as focused on a report if we covered all the
different types. Which is why the two types of pop-up
shops that this report covers is those that are about food
and fashion. Another source of information was much
more hands-on, as I had the chance to work at a few of
these pop-up shops and gather insight such as to why
they chose open the shop, to begin with, and why they
decided on the location they did.

In terms of inputting data, spatially mapping the location

of pop-up shops showed clustering trends. Additionally,
codifying our data in 4 ways was another method used.
Through all the information gathered through BlogTO,
and my first-hand experience in the field, we used four
codes. First, was the type of fashion sold (men’s,
women’s, both, also did it include beauty/skincare
products as well). The second was the food type sold
within the shops (if the shop serves savory or sweet
food) Third we coded the street type (if the shop located
on the main road or a side street). Lastly, we coded for
the days the shop was open for.

Culture, Creativity, and Cities Capstone Course | Dept. of Sociology | University of Toronto – Scarborough
1265 Military Trail, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4 Canada
Findings
After collecting all the spatial data from the pop-up
shops within Toronto, it became very clear that all
these shops are clustered within the downtown core.
Through spatially mapping the location of all the
fashion and food pop-up shops within Toronto in 2017,
this gave a clear representation of the obvious
clustering of these pop-ups that are primarily focused
downtown. These shops are known to not only cater to
trends but also the people within the area. This finding
directly correlates with Patterson & Silvers (2015)
perfect audience theory, which has helped us in
understanding that where these brands choose to place
their pop-up shops is no mistake.
Coding all the information gathered about these pop-up
shops showed a few key things, that are much more
specific to each pop-up shop included within this
research study. One important finding is that these
pop-up shops are mostly placed on main roads, within
the city due to the high foot traffic and is easily
accessible. Another important finding was that there
were significantly more women’s fashion pop-up
shops then there were men’s. Furthermore, some of the
fashion pop-ups are isomorphic in the sense that they
are just repeating what similar shops have done before
them, as there is not anything really separating them
from the rest. They are clumped together in this one
uniform mold, which always includes a grand opening
special event, along with the sale of both men’s and
women fashion.
When coding the type of food sold at these pop-up
shops, it was apparent that they were significantly
more savory, then sweet pop-up shops within the city.
Meaning that these food-based pop-up shops are
selling/giving away food items such as gourmet
hotdogs, opposed to custom cookie creations that the
Chiptits Bake Bar was doing all summer long.
Finally, through coding the number of days these pop-
up shops were open for, it was discovered that the
majority of these shops are open for a few days to a
few weeks. This reconfirms something already known,
which is the concept of pop-ups shops in general and
how truly temporary these shops really are in the
market.
Culture, Creativity, and Cities Capstone Course | Dept. of Sociology | University of Toronto – Scarborough
1265 Military Trail, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4 Canada
Conclusion and Recommendation
The research gathered on pop-up shops within the city
of Toronto throughout 2017 has shown a few key
things. One of those being that fashion pop-up shops
within the City of Toronto is very isomorphic. There is
nothing separating them from the other type of pop-ups
within the city, as they are following the same trend.
Another key finding coincides with Patterson and
Silvers (2015) hypothesis about the perfect audience,
which is that the placement of the pop-up shops is not
at random. These pop-up shops are placed within
specific areas, to target the demographic within that
place. Similarly, Harris (2015) mentions how the
spatial placement of pop-ups within cities, rely heavily
on the type of things citizens of the city enjoy, in
combination of their spending habits which is what the
research found on Toronto pop-up shops seem to
support. Furthermore, in terms of a recommendation,
it would be beneficial to cross exam different cities
pop-up shops and to see if they all follow the same
trends as Toronto based pop-up do. Possibly looking
into Tokyo and New York City, as they are both in
separate countries that may add to different findings.
References
Harris, E. (2015). Navigating Pop‐up geographies:
Urban Space–Times of flexibility, interstitiality and
immersion. Geography Compass, 9(11), 592-603.
10.1111/gec3.12248
Patterson, M., & Silver, D. (2015). The place of art:
Local area characteristics and arts growth in canada,
2001–2011. Poetics, 51(Complete), 69-87.
10.1016/j.poetic.2015.05.003
Culture, Creativity, and Cities Capstone Course | Dept. of Sociology | University of Toronto – Scarborough
1265 Military Trail, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4 Canada
Culture, Creativity, and Cities Capstone Course | Dept. of Sociology | University of Toronto – Scarborough
1265 Military Trail, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4 Canada
Culture, Creativity, and Cities Capstone Course | Dept. of Sociology | University of Toronto – Scarborough
1265 Military Trail, Toronto, Ontario M1C 1A4 Canada