Burger Priest has dropped their Stafford branch , but it's been took over by an independent company by the look of it.
Not sure if this is another indication that the Riverside development wasn't as great as first though, or maybe the company themselves just wanted to downsize / spin underperforming restaurants into a new company.
It wasn’t a very good place to get a bite anyway, not nearly as bad as Big Bite but their burgers were bland, dry slabs of meat.
They may well be rebranding given what
@Wormella has said.
Free parking is what Riverside needs, right now there’s other places for people to park in town that will drive them away from the complex. I think some of the need stores swapping out too - IMO Vision Express isn’t a good store for there as you don’t pop into it spontaneously, and people only go once every year or so, so it’s hardly a footfall driver. It’s an “obligation” store more than anything, not something you want in a complex with limited units.
I imagine rent is a factor too, it absolutely could have been a good setup but I imagine the rent is probably stupid money.
On that note, there’s still a handful of units at Kingsmead that need filling too. I imagine that’s a mixture of rent and also anyone who’s even dealt with business property before will look at it and go “yeah this will cost a fortune to kit out” because they didn’t bother putting any AC in when building it, and we all know what happened when B&M didn’t bother doing that when they moved in.