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Five Guys is latest business to give up on Croydon High Street

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Gaping hole in the High Street: Five Guys, which had traded from the large town centre premises for eight years, closed last week. The former Blacks/Millets store next door closed six months earlier

It’s not just Croydon’s pubs which are closing down.

Five Guys, the pricy American burger joint on Croydon High Street, has closed in the past week.

While Croydon’s failed Mayor, Jason Perry, drops his chips over the opening of a couple of kiosks where the Allders department store used to be, Five Guys joins an accelerating exodus of businesses from Croydon town centre.

Earlier this week, Inside Croydon reported how 27 units inside the increasingly dilapidated Whitgift Centre have closed in the past 12 months.

This “managed decline” of the shopping mall is under the control of developers Westfield, who this week managed to open an Islamic clothing outfitters and a florists’ shop on the site of Allders, which council bailiffs closed down six years ago on instructions from… Westfield.

A handful of “kiosks” (which is how they were described by Westfield) seems unlikely to turnround the declining fortunes of Croydon town centre, as Westfield have been promising to do since 2012.

Yesterday’s latest openings were greeted by piss-poor Perry with the usual load of gush and nonsense, as the Mayor demonstrated once again he’s more likely to advocate for big business than fight for the interests of Croydon’s residents and business owners: “Great”, “Stunning”, “a real game-changer”, “transformation” were among the plainly ludicrous things he said.

Café society: The Milan Bar on Croydon High Street has been empty since it closed three years ago

The only real transformation that is going on is that of businesses closing down all around North End, George Street and the High Street.

Last week, Inside Croydon reported on the latest two Croydon pubs to close.

Five Guys occupied a pub site, the former Yates bar, which closed in 2015. Five Guys had been trading from 7-11 High Street since 2017, but the huge premises were rarely busy with diners, and the business appeared to depend on delivery orders. The burger chain has opened a branch at Valley Park, off Purley Way, which will doubtless pick up the slack of that trade, without town centre rents or business rates.

Next door, what had long been Blacks became Millets in 2017, when the outdoor wear and camping retailers closed down their store at the top of Surrey Street – Milletts Corner – where it had been based for almost a century. The high street store closed around six months ago and has been boarded up since, although there has been some building works going on inside in the past month.

Across the road from Five Guys, the large town centre Post Office is set to close soon.

Caribbean chain restaurant Turtle Bay closed earlier this year, and nearby, The Milan Bar was shut by Wetherspoons in 2022 – one of five ‘Spoons in Croydon to have been shut down in recent years.

Asian food hall Tokia Square has, meanwhile, opened in the Grants building earlier this year, though it is too early to judge how well trading is going there.

Against this backdrop, part-time Perry – a director of the unironically named Croydon Business Improvement District – thinks the handful of retail jobs created in a burkha shop or in Miniso, which opened a fortnight ago, is in some way “a real game-changer”.

Which suggests he is either delusional, or he’s lying to you.

Read more: Two more Croydon town centre pubs pull down the shutters
Read more: Another Whitgift store to close – and manager blames Westfield
Read more: ‘Permanently closed’: Whitgift Centre works mark end of days
Read more: Hammer blow for Whitgift Centre with new delay to masterplan

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