Modern, even hip, mortuaries around the world are hoping to answer one question: How do we commemorate death in 2024?
In the affluent neighborhood of Crouch End in London, a new business is attracting some attention. The storefront’s blue-and-white facade is airy and minimalist. Three polka-dot vases on plinths sit in the window. To the casual observer, the space might look like an art gallery. But through the window is something a little more curious: a sea-foam-green box measuring 7 feet by 2 feet.
It’s generally upon noticing the box that passers-by will do a double-take of the shop’s signage: Exit Here. The polka dot vases aren’t vases. They’re urns. The box is a coffin. And in the back, unknown to them, is a 12-person morgue.
“We knew the name would be Marmite,” said Oliver Peyton, a renowned restaurateur, comparing the polarized reactions to his funeral home’s somewhat cheeky name to those elicited by the yeasty British spread. “You either love it or you hate it. My mother-in-law hates it.”
Mr. Peyton, who founded the first branch of Exit Here in the neighborhood of Chiswick in 2019 as a modern alternative to traditional funeral parlors, is a familiar face on the British hospitality scene: He was the founder of the Atlantic Bar & Grill, a West London hot spot that closed in 2006, and he served as a judge on the BBC show “Great British Menu.”
Mr. Peyton, 62, who is originally from Sligo, Ireland, became interested in the mortuary business while planning a funeral for his father, who died in 2010. He felt that there weren’t enough choices in the process. “Funerals are historically a hand-me-down business,” he said, adding that people tend to use the funeral parlor that’s closest to their home.
He also believes funeral planning is not so different from hospitality. “It’s still a service industry,” he said. “We’re taking care of people at a very heightened emotional period in their lives.”