McDonald’s today announced plans to flood Britain’s high streets with 200 new restaurants in the next four years.
In its biggest expansion since 2002, the fast food chain has announced a £1billion investment with a view to ‘supporting successful high streets’.
The rollout will test new restaurant formats, including smaller branches, and is set to create some 24,000 jobs.
It follows a grim few years for once bustling shopping hubs with recognisable names vanishing nationwide. Yesterday, Ted Baker became the most recent addition to the scrap heap after the closure of its last 31 stores.
However, the move will spark concerns amid Britain’s obesity crisis, which costs the country £100billlion per year, according to a recent analysis.
Experts have long blamed the nation’s ever-expanding waistline on the rise of processed, calorie-laden food served in restaurants such as the 200 new ones which will be opened by 2028.
McDonald’s new £1bn announcement, made in a report marking the brand’s 50th year in Britain, represents a marked increase on the £618million invested in the five years to 2023.
The fast food chain already owns 1,435 UK restaurants, around 80 per cent of which are owned by franchises, employing over 170,000 Brits, making it the country’s biggest private employer of young people. It has not revealed the location of the new branches.
McDonald’s has pledged to create 24,000 new jobs across the UK and Ireland by opening over 200 new restaurants in the next four years
Alistair Macrow, the chief executive of McDonald’s UK&I, said he was ‘delighted’ that the brand were announcing a plan to commit to British high streets
Alistair Macrow, the chief executive of McDonald’s UK&I, said: ‘We have come a long way since we first opened our doors in Woolwich 50 years ago.
‘I’m delighted that in this milestone year we are able to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to growth, and announce the creation of new jobs across the country.
‘It’s a moment to celebrate, and also to look ahead to what’s next. Whether that’s continuing to provide the best value for our customers, investing in our restaurants, supporting our suppliers across the UK or launching new initiatives for young people where our communities need them most.
‘We’re proud of what we have delivered in the last 50 years and are committed to investing in new opportunities and supporting growth across the UK.’
The report said more than £51.56bn has been spent on UK-based suppliers since 1974 and claimed to have added nearly £95bn of gross value to the economy.
As well as trialing smaller high street branches, the investment will go towards new ‘drive to’ restaurants and the brand said it will upgrade its preexisting locations too.
The huge investment proposal comes despite the company registering its first loss in sales across the globe since before the Covid pandemic last month.
And the news also comes against a backdrop of struggling UK high streets, in a week that saw Ted Baker clothes stores shuttered across Britain.
A different American company, Authentic Brands, which owns Ted Baker’s intellectual property, said that despite ‘tireless efforts’ it could not ‘overcome’ the financial issues the business faced.
Authentic blamed the process on ‘damage’ done during a partnership with Dutch company AARC Group, and the ‘significant level of arrears’ that had built up during the association.
The fashion brand’s demise came almost a year to the day after Wilko, another much-loved high street name, closed its doors for good, before relaunching online.
Banks have also been decimated on the UK high street.
As of May this year, 60 per cent of UK bank branches had shut since 2015, when Which? started tracking closures.
By the end of 2024, some 3.1 million Brits across 33 parliamentary constituencies will be without a single bank branch.
Bank and building society losses from January 2015 to the end of 2025 (including scheduled)
A closed Lloyds bank branch in Plymouth, Devon, as bank branches across the country vanish
While the rate of closures had initially appeared to slow down since it reached a peak in 2017, researchers said in ‘recent years there has been a troubling surge’.
Bank bosses have been accused of ‘engaging in a race to close branches’ after the Government announced plans in 2020 for laws to protect access to cash, which could make it harder to close a branch if alternative cash provision is lacking.
Barclays led closures with 1,216 branches biting the dust; while NatWest Group, which comprises NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland and Ulster Bank, has closed 1,360 branches, Which? said.
Lloyds Banking Group, made up of Lloyds Bank, Halifax and Bank of Scotland, has shut 1,146 sites, the consumer group added.