Expanding Your Restaurant to More Locations in the UK

If you're considering a second, third, or even tenth location right now, you're not alone.

Toast's Voice of the UK Restaurant Industry 2025 found that 76% of UK restaurateurs expect sales to increase this year, even though 48% say profitability is their biggest challenge and expansion plans have softened. At the same time, many diners are cutting back or trading down. Nearly 38% of diners say they are eating out less than they did a year ago, citing rising costs and the need to save money.

In other words, the UK market is tough, but growth is still on the table if you expand with a clear strategy.

This guide walks you through every stage of expanding your restaurant in the UK, from knowing when you’re truly ready to grow, to choosing the right neighbourhoods, securing funding, and putting the systems in place to keep every site consistent and profitable. By following these seven steps, you’re grounding your decisions in data rather than instinct, avoiding the usual multi-site pitfalls, and giving every new location the same strong foundations as your first.

Step 1: Figure Out If Now Is the Right Time to Expand

Before you start scouting sites, sanity-check whether your current concept is genuinely ready to scale. Expansion amplifies whatever is already happening in your business, both the good and the bad.

Check Guest Demand and Value Perception

You want to be expanding a concept that guests actively choose even in a cost-conscious climate.

According to the Toast Consumer Preferences Survey 2025, menu variety (41.9%) and price (30.5%) are the top two influences on where UK diners choose to eat. That means your existing location should already be hitting a clear value sweet spot for your target guests, offering a menu that feels varied enough without overwhelming the kitchen, and attracting repeat visits rather than one-off curiosity.

At the same time, UK diners are laser-focused on cost. According to the Toast Consumer Preferences Survey 2025, 63% of guests say price is either a primary or quite influential factor in restaurant choice, and nearly nine in ten notice price changes often or sometimes.

If your first site is only full when you're heavy on discounts, or online reviews consistently mention poor value, pressing ahead with a new site will simply multiply the problem.

Confirm Your Unit Economics

For your flagship location, you should be able to answer what your average spend per head and weekly revenue trend are over the past six to twelve months, whether you're achieving consistent prime cost percentage and labour percentage that would support another site, whether you know exactly when you hit break-even in a typical week, and if revenue dipped 10 to 15%, could you still service new debt or lease obligations.

If you can't get these numbers within a few clicks, it's worth tightening up reporting and dashboards before you commit to a new lease.

Stress-Test Your Operations

Operators in Toast's UK survey cited managing restaurant technology, supplier relationships, and staff as major pain points, alongside profitability. You don't need perfection, but you do need processes you can repeat.

Ask yourself whether a new GM could follow your playbook for opening, closing, and mid-shift checks without you on site, whether recipes, specs, and prep methods are documented or mostly in your head or your head chef's, and whether you already run at least some multi-site-style complexity, such as delivery channels, event nights, or pop-ups without chaos.

Riding House Café Group, with three London locations and an all-day dining concept, only moved to Toast once their legacy POS started to hold back multi-location growth. Afterwards, they could push menu changes across all locations instantly and use detailed product mix reporting to refine seasonal menus without manual spreadsheets or overnight updates.

Step 2: Build a Data-Led Expansion Strategy

Once you're confident the concept is solid, it's time to design an expansion strategy that's grounded in data rather than gut instinct.

Deep-Dive Your Existing Guest Base

Use what you already have. EPOS data can identify your highest-spend and most frequent guests, and you should map postcodes where possible. Channel mix reveals how much revenue is on premise versus delivery versus collection, and whether that differs by daypart. Popular dishes and occasions tell you whether you're a Friday night treat, a weekday lunch spot, or a pre-theatre go-to.

Overlay this with macro data. ONS consumer trend figures show that whilst overall household consumption is inching up, spending on consumer-facing services like bars and restaurants remains fragile, with only marginal quarterly growth. That makes it even more important to choose locations where your concept naturally fits local habits.

Refine Your Value and Pricing Strategy for Multiple Sites

As you expand, pricing becomes a strategic lever rather than a cost-plus exercise.

According to the Toast Consumer Preferences Survey 2025, UK diners show a strong preference for structured pricing, with 37.5% favouring prix fixe menus compared with 18.5% preferring pure à la carte.

For multi-location groups, this can be a huge advantage. Prix fixe or bundled offers make it easier to keep food cost percentages predictable across sites, communicate value clearly in new markets, and align menus with promo-heavy delivery platforms, where UKHospitality reports promotions have grown nearly 50% over two years.

Your second or fifth location is also a chance to engineer a cleaner, more scalable menu by trimming low-margin, low-seller items and leaning into dishes with high perceived value but manageable food cost.

Step 3: Choose the Right Neighbourhood

Even the most profitable first site won't save you from a bad location decision. First, you should choose your neighbourhood, then your specific unit. Here’s how.

Shortlist Neighbourhoods, Not Just Units

Start by mapping concentric circles around your current site. Expanding into nearby areas lets you reuse brand awareness and word-of-mouth, simplifies staff sharing and training, and makes it easier for you to be physically present across sites.

When evaluating neighbourhoods, consider demographics such as age, income, and office versus residential mix. Look at the existing restaurant mix to see whether you're filling a clear gap or entering a crowded segment. Assess footfall and visibility to ensure your signage is obvious from main flows of traffic and transport hubs. Consider delivery potential and whether there's a dense enough population within your delivery radius.

Step 4: Understand UK Planning and Licensing Essentials

You don't need to become a planning consultant, but you do need to know the contours of the UK regulatory landscape. Most restaurants, cafés, and shops now fall under Use Class E, which allows changes of use between many commercial activities without a full planning application, as long as you stay within the class. External alterations, extraction, and signage may still need consent. 

In England and Wales, you'll need a premises licence and a designated premises supervisor with a personal licence to sell alcohol and for late-night refreshment. 

Fees are typically linked to rateable value, and each council handles applications locally. For expansions with terraces, roof gardens, or extended hours, check local authority policies carefully, especially in cumulative impact zones or residential streets.

Many operators work with a commercial agent plus a specialist licensing solicitor or planning consultant for complex sites. For smaller expansions, your agent and local council's pre-application advice can often give enough clarity early on.

Step 5: Design Each New Site for Guest Experience and Social Proof

It's not just about being on the right street. It's about creating a space guests want to keep returning to and posting about.

According to the Toast Consumer Preferences Survey 2025 on restaurant design, 70.5% of UK guests say the design and layout of a venue is important or extremely important in their decision to return.

That has clear implications for how you replicate and adapt your concept. Keep core brand elements such as lighting style, materials, and signature colours consistent across locations. Adapt layout and seating mix to local needs. For example, more bar seating in city centres and more family tables in suburbs. Prioritise clear ordering flows and sightlines for both guests and staff.

UK guests are also increasingly discovering new openings through social media. Make sure every new site has visually distinctive corners such as a bar, a mural, or a banquette that photograph well and match your brand.

Step 6: Build a Multi-Location Operating Model From Day One

Tech and systems are where expansion dreams either click or collapse.

Voice of the Industry data shows 69% of UK restaurateurs plan to increase tech spend in the next twelve months, often focusing on labour optimisation, analytics, and inventory tools. Here are some ideas for efficiently operating multiple sites.

Centralise Menus, Reporting, and Permissions

Riding House Café used to manually push menu updates to each site, sometimes requiring overnight downtime and days of planning. With Toast, they now publish changes instantly across three locations, using product mix reporting to refine seasonal menus and daypart offerings, a huge win when you're running all-day dining with frequent specials.

Other UK groups have followed a similar playbook. Le Bab, operating six London locations, uses handhelds and kitchen display systems to consistently turn tables in 35 to 40 minutes at busy sites, compared with up to 90 minutes under their old EPOS.

The common thread is a single system of record that covers menus, reporting, and staff permissions for every location, instead of a patchwork of tills, card machines, and spreadsheets.

Speed Up Service Without Losing the Human Touch

Expansion doesn't have to mean feeling chain-like. Urban Leisure Group, a London-based group of neighbourhood bars and restaurants, wanted to protect their living-room feel whilst fixing serious tech issues. After switching to Toast, they saw walkouts reduced by 50% thanks to handheld devices enabling faster table service, and a 75% decrease in POS support issues.

For expansion, this matters because you can maintain consistent speed-of-service standards across sites, new locations can open with service flows already optimised instead of starting from scratch, and you'll have comparable data across locations to spot issues early.

Treat Training and Onboarding as a Non-Negotiable

According to the Toast Consumer Preferences Survey 2025 on hospitality staffing, over half (52.5%) of UK hospitality workers say a structured onboarding process is extremely valuable, with a further 36.5% calling it somewhat valuable.

For multi-location groups, that means giving every role a clear path. Whether someone is starting as FOH Level 1, moving into bartending, or stepping up as a shift lead. It also means relying on simple tools like checklists, digital playbooks, and peer mentoring instead of loose, ad-hoc shadowing. And as you grow, create chances for great people to try shifts at other locations or take on bigger responsibilities so they can see a real future with you.

When you open a second or third site, having a consistent onboarding process makes it much easier to parachute existing stars into new venues as culture carriers whilst quickly upskilling new hires.

Step 7: Plan Your Funding and Finances

The fundamentals haven't changed. You'll need a blend of cash reserves, financing, and realistic projections to expand safely.

There are multiple funding routes: traditional bank loans, private investors, landlord contributions, and sector-specific finance. Whichever route you take, try to avoid betting on overly optimistic sales ramp-up, stress-test scenarios where sales are 20% lower than forecast, and maintain a cash buffer for at least three to six months of operating costs.

For additional support and advocacy on regulatory and financial matters affecting UK restaurants, consider joining UKHospitality.

Step 8: Launch Your New Location

A smart expansion strategy doesn't stop with the lease. You'll need to build demand deliberately in every new neighbourhood through a solid marketing strategy.

Some practical moves include leveraging your existing fans through email lists, social followers, and loyalty members as your best first guests. Partner locally by co-promoting with nearby businesses, hotels, or cultural venues. Stagger soft opens and friends-and-family nights to test menus and flows before full launch. Use online ordering and delivery strategically rather than as a default. In some locations, it makes sense to ramp delivery later, once on-premise operations are stable.

Turn Your Expansion Plan into Action

Expansion isn't just about opening more doors. It's about choosing the right sites, building systems that work at scale, and protecting the heart of your concept as you grow.

If you're starting to map out your next location, this is a good moment to review whether your current tech stack is helping or holding you back. Multi-location operators like Riding House Café, Le Bab, Brother Marcus, Urban Leisure Group, and Wolfpack are already using Toast to streamline menus, speed up service, and unlock better reporting across sites.

Whether you're opening your second site or your twentieth, the principles remain the same: know your numbers, protect your culture, and give every new location the systems it needs to succeed from day one. With the right approach, you can turn expansion from a risk into your strongest growth lever.