British retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) has announced a major expansion of its food business in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), with five large-format stores expected to open in the next 12 months.

The first of these will open in December in Dubai Festival City, where the brand’s franchise partner, Al-Futtaim, has operated an M&S Fashion store since 2018.

The 15,327 square foot Foodhall will be the company’s largest outside its home market, offering more than 3,500 M&S products alongside 500 new locally sourced items that it said are “carefully curated” for the market.

The store will work with more than 200 of its UK suppliers as well as local suppliers including Let’s Eat and Domus to offer everything for a full weekly shop, M&S said.

The store will also house several firsts for the business. It marks M&S’s first introduction of its flowers range internationally, as well as its first sushi counter in the middle east. In addition, it will offer some services that are entirely new to M&S, such as a fruit butcher.

Al-Futtaim has operated M&S stores in the Middle East for nearly 30 years. After the success of its Fashion business in the region, the retailer said it plans to scale its food business in the region.

As part of this expansion, M&S will lower prices across over half of its Foodhall offerings in the UAE, it said.

Mark Lemming, managing director of international at M&S, commented: “Our purpose is to bring the best of M&S to more customers around the world. Building on the strength of our Fashion business in the Middle East, these new large format Foodhalls are an exciting opportunity to introduce more customers in the UAE to the quality, innovation and trusted value M&S Food is known for.

“By bringing a broader range of M&S Food together under one roof, we can become a bigger part of our customers’s everyday lives, giving them more choice and more reasons to shop with us more often as we continue to grow our presence in the region.”

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