Fosse Park has expressed an interest in expanding onto the Everards Brewery site, situated next to the shopping centre.
The brewery plans to relocate from its Castle Acres site adjacent Fosse Park to nearby land it already owns, close to the Leicestershire Police HQ in Enderby.
Last year, bosses announced a proposal to create an 11-acre food and drink park at the new site and sell its existing 12-acre facility. They hope to receive tens of millions of pounds from the sale.
Stephen Gould, Everards' managing director, said: "The current owners of Fosse Park have approached us. We have kept them up to date. We have always had an open dialogue with them
"There's active interest in the site from a number of parties, mainly from retailers. However, at no stage have we put the site formally on the market.
"It's being handled very sensitively and we are consulting widely."
The 12-acre Castle Acre site is to the south of the shopping park, between Braunstone and junction 21 of the M1. Fosse Park, which opened in 1989, is the UK's leading out-of-town shopping centre. It contains 40 shops over 37 acres and attracts 12 million visitors a year. It is currently owned by a group of Irish investors.
The then owners of Fosse Park signed a special agreement with Everards Brewery more than 10 years ago giving the shopping centre first option to buy the Everards site.
This agreement was not renewed after a deadline was reached. However, the park's current owners are still thought to be interested.
Fosse Park manager Adrian Young declined to comment and its owners could not be contacted.
Everards plan to occupy five acres of the food and drink park and offer the remainder to other businesses. The site would also contain a visitor centre.
Mr Gould said if the development was approved by Blaby District Council, work could commence by the end of the year.
Mr Gould announced Everards made a pre-tax profit of £2.47 million in the year to September 24, 2011, down £1.44 million on last year. The fall reflected one-off profit gains of £1.6 million made last year from the sale of property and the closure of its final-salary scheme.
The company said a 6.1 per cent rise in operating profit to £3.93 million over the same period better reflected day-to-day trading. Turnover was down 2.5 per cent to £28.2 million. The company, founded in 1849, employs 106 people and runs 176 pubs.
Gold ATM machine at Westfield: meet the first customer - Daily Telegraph
"It has not even started. The buying power of the smart money has moved into gold, but we didn't see the normal consumer buying gold. We have yet to hit the record price from the 1980s," said Mr Geissler.
The Gold to Go machine was unveiled at the Westfield shopping centre, in a rather gloomy corner next to a Barclays cash machine, a fizzy drinks vending machine and the lifts down to the underground car park.
The machine attracted a small crowd of curious shoppers, but in the first 40 minutes only one paying customer.
Mr McCleary said he had followed the gold market for some time, but this was the first time he had invested in any. "I am confident it will hold its value. You've got to be a mad man not to have realised what's happening in the market. People in Egypt are going to the bank, taking out their money and converting it into gold."
The machine follows 17 others around the world, most of them in Germany and Dubai. The company said it had an annual turnover of €36m (£32.6m) from these machines, with the average machine receiving about 500 transactions each month.
Mr Geissler said half the customers were ordinary consumers looking for gifts, pointing out that a 1g piece of gold was more interesting than a bunch of flowers "and would last for 4,000 years longer". The other half were serious investors.
Not everyone in the shopping centre was impressed. Sarah O'Malley said: "I'm not interested. I sold my gold jewellery for money not that long ago." Asked if she thought the company had missed the market, she answered: "Yes, I think they have".
The price of the gold is taken from the world market and updated every 10 minutes, with Gold to Go placing a mark-up to pay for its costs, especially the production costs of very small coins and ingots. Within a few minutes of Mr McCleary making his purchase the price had fallen from £100 to £99 for 2.5g.
Gold to Go, and its bullion supplier Zen Gold, insisted the mark-up was in line with what banks and other retail outlets charge. But ATS Bullion, a long-standing gold shop on The Strand in London, charges £40 for 1g compared with the machine's £47, and £115 for a one-tenth ounce Krugerrand coin, compared with Gold to Go's price of £121.
Sandra Conway, the managing director at ATS, said: "Anything that promotes gold has got to be good, but I think this is mainly going to attract novelty buyers, not serious investors."
The machine takes cash and credit cards, and anyone who wants to buy more than £2,500-worth needs to scan in their passport to satisfy British anti-money laundering rules.
The machine currently stocks a variety of weights of gold, but most worth less than £1,000. It intends to start offering 250g, worth about £8,000, in the next few weeks.
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