After seven years in Fulton Market, an all too familiar fate has caught up with Time Out Market Chicago, which will close its doors Jan. 23, the company announced Wednesday.
The food hall at 916 W. Fulton Market opened in 2019 and brought local chefs, restaurants and some of the city’s best bites under one roof. Time Out Markets are owned by the Time Out Group, a British-based hospitality and media company that also owns the Time Out digital media brand, which covers events, food and culture.
A day after the news broke, employees at Time Out Market Chicago were serving customers as usual. The wooden high tables were humming with an afternoon lunch-and-laptop crowd, but Julio China, a support staff member at Time Out Market, said it used to be even busier when he started just two years ago.
“I did see a decline for sure, but honestly — closing down? I’m surprised,” China said Thursday. “I still thought we were good. I never really thought about them being like, ‘OK, we’re done.’”
China said when staff found out, there was a slow panic among those who are employed by Time Out Market. While many of the cashiers and cooks at each respective restaurant stall will likely head back to the physical restaurant location, China and his colleagues are out of a job.
“Our managers are helping us out, reaching out to people trying to get us a job interview. For me, it’s whatever comes next. I was in this position two years ago with another restaurant too, when they were about to close. I guess I’m starting over again. It’s tough, but it happens,” he said.
Michael Marlay, CEO of Time Out Market, said in a statement the decision was driven by inconsistent foot traffic following the pandemic and a hybrid work environment that made it difficult to bounce back.
“It has been an honour to serve Chicago, and we have loved our time here — Chicago is a fantastic city with outstanding food and cultural scenes. We want to thank our team, our chefs and restaurateurs who truly are the best of the city. It is thanks to all of them that the Chicago Market has been a wonderful place for our guests whom we also would like to thank wholeheartedly,” Marley said in the statement. “We are proud to have been able to give our vendors a platform in Time Out Market, we will continue to champion these outstanding, best of the city talents.”
The digital media brand Time Out Chicago is staying put and “remains deeply committed to covering the best things to do, see and eat across this incredible city,” the company said.
Jesse Li, general manager of Qing Xiang Yuan Dumplings, has had a stall at Time Out Market since summer 2024. He said all of his employees staffed at the food hall would be back at his Chinatown location.
“We want to treat them well … a big corporation can treat you however they want, ‘We closed down. I don’t care what happens to you,’’’ Li said. “But we’re a small business. We treat everybody like a family.”
Li said he wasn’t happy with how the company announced the closure. They kept things tight-lipped without giving restaurants a proper heads up, he said.
“It was shocking to us. Still, we at least had a week and a half, I know sometimes people don’t even have that much,” Li noted.
For Jessica Perjes, owner of the popular Hermosa-based Tacotlan, it hadn’t even been three full months since she opened a stall at Time Out Market.
“My biggest priority right now is making sure that people who were working at Time Out Market get jobs, because my team is just going to come back to home base,” Perjes said.
While Time Out Market was a great opportunity for Perjes, and for people outside of the Hermosa neighborhood to experience Tacotlan’s famous birria, she said retrospectively, the format lacked the cozy, family-run atmosphere of the original location.
“My father did say from the beginning actually that he didn’t think Time Out Market was for us, and then I also started second-guessing it,” Perjes said. “So maybe it wasn’t for me and I truly believe that everything happens for a reason.”
Tacotlan’s last day at Time Out Market is Jan. 22. The rest of the stalls will cease operations Jan. 23.
On Thursday afternoon, a steadier crowd of office workers streamed into the Fulton Market warehouse. Servers were trading off shifts and the bar was clinking away. China, the support staff employee, said it’s typical for the crowds to multiply around 4 to 5 p.m. The music also changes, the lighting gets moodier and the upstairs bleachers start to get noticed.
“I guess it just wasn’t enough,” China said.
The closing of Chicago’s Time Out Market falls in line with similar struggles other food halls in the city have faced in recent years. Revival Food Hall in the Loop boasted an ambitious 24,000 square feet of space with more than 15 fast-casual food stalls when it opened in 2016 inside the National Building. It faced a confusing closure in 2024, before being scooped by a new group, STHRN Hospitality, to rebrand and adapt with more breakfast and bar options.
And years before that was the closing of Latinicity — the Latin-inspired food hall in the Loop’s Block 37 — with operators’ focus shifting to other concepts.
On Thursday, a representative with Time Out Market said that with fewer workers downtown, rising costs and consumer habits that shifted during the pandemic, multi-vendor spaces require high overhead and make them even more vulnerable when tables and chairs sit empty.
Company representatives said Time Out Market in Boston is also closing, but the locations in New York City and Brooklyn will stay open and be the only remaining markets in the U.S.
Currently, according to the company website, there are markets in Lisbon, Dubai, Montreal, Cape Town, Barcelona, Bahrain, Osaka and Budapest. Four more markets are listed as under development for 2026, including Vancouver, Abu Dhabi, Prague and Riyadh.
