Taste Orchard to shut down by 31 Dec — Surprise or expected?

In yet another crippling blow to Singapore’s F&B culture, Taste Orchard, located at 160 Orchard Road, will be closing its doors on 31 Dec 2025. Master tenant HAO Mart’s 7.5-year lease with landlord OG has been terminated.

This comes as a shock to tenants, as it’s been barely a year and a half since the building’s re-opening in Feb 2024. The news was initially broken to them via a letter sent on 12 Sep 2025, requesting that they return their units in good condition.

Some claim that the closure would’ve come sooner or later, as Taste Orchard has been suffering from low footfall since Jul of this year. Despite this, leases for units were still up for grabs for as much as S$180,000 per month.

The mall is home to various F&B outlets, tuition centres and Eccellente by HAO Mart, a mid-to-high-end grocery store owned by HAO Mart itself.

Netizens often criticised HAO Mart for gross mismanagement of their supermarkets, with some claiming that shelves were often left unstocked and unorganised.

The mall’s layout has also been criticised, with much of it carrying over from the department store days, resulting in eateries being relegated to corners without much footfall.

But what about the tenants? In an Instagram post, BHC Chicken stated that their Taste Orchard outlet moved to The Star Vista when they shut their doors on 14 Sep 2025.

As for Oni Kimbap, we have been informed that the stall will remain open till the mall’s closing date of 31 Dec 2025 while they seek a new location.

Employees are apparently shaken by the large number of closings around them. Some were foreigners from countries like Malaysia and India, so losing business would be especially difficult.

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