Fast Food Cities

Whether it’s shopping for your next outfit, ordering prescriptions from your NHS pharmacy online, or getting tonight’s dinner delivered to your door, we can do so much from the comfort of our own homes.

Fast food restaurants and takeaways are one of the best examples of this. They are often a cheap and simple solution for your next meal, and it gives you more time to do things you enjoy. And the rising popularity of delivery services such as Just Eat and Deliveroo has made this easier and more tempting than ever before.

However, there is an obesity problem in the UK, and the rising number of fast food restaurants and takeaways hardly help tackle this. That’s why we wanted to know which UK cities have the most fast food restaurants.

We’ve looked at some of the most popular fast food chains in the UK to find out where their stores are located.

The UK cities with the most fast food restaurants

Newcastle has been named the UK’s fast food capital, with 28 fast food restaurants per 100,000 people
We’ve looked at the store locations of some of the most popular fast food chains in the UK, to find out which city has the most per 100,000 people.

1

Newcastle Upon Tyne

27.5

Fast food restaurants per 100,000 people

The fast food capital of the United Kingdom is Newcastle, with 27.5 fast food restaurants per 100,000 people. There are a total of 53 fast food restaurants in Newcastle, 19 of which are Subways which is the most common for the Geordies.

2

Manchester

27.3

Fast food restaurants per 100,000 people

In second place is Manchester, with 27.3 fast food restaurants per 100,000 people. Manchester has twice as many fast food restaurants as Newcastle, with 108, however, Manchester is twice as populous. Once again, it’s Subway which is the most popular, with 41 stores, followed by McDonald's with 29.

3

Belfast

24.7

Fast food restaurants per 100,000 people

Completing our top three is Northern Ireland’s Belfast, with 24.7 fast food restaurants per 100,000 people. Once again, there are more Subway restaurants than any other fast food chain in Belfast, followed by Burger King this time, with 18 restaurants.

KEY: Total fast food restaurants Fast food restaurants per 100,000 people

City

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map 1

How has the number of fast food chains in the UK changed since 2013?

More than 11,000 fast food restaurants have opened in the last 10 years, an increase of over 30% in the UK.

Fast food or takeaways can often be the solution if you don’t have much time. And with the introduction of companies such as Deliveroo and Uber Eats, it has never been easier to get your meals delivered.

1

31.1%

10-year increase since 2013

Since 2013, the number of fast food restaurants has increased from just over 37,000 to almost 49,000. This is an increase of more than 11,000, or just over 31%. Deliveroo and Uber Eats were founded in 2013 and 2014 respectively, however, it wasn’t until 2016 that the number of fast food restaurants significantly increased. Between 2016 and 2017, there was a 4.8% increase which saw the number of fast food restaurants and takeaways exceed 40,000.

2

17.0%

5-year increase since 2018

In the last five years, the number of fast food restaurants has increased by exactly 17%. There were 41,700 in 2018, and in 2023 there are almost 49,000. This growth of over 7,000 restaurants is even more impressive considering there was a decrease of 1.7% in 2021 due to the pandemic. However, just a year after lockdown, there was an increase of 5.9%, which was enough to exceed the total number of restaurants in 2020.

graph
KEY: Takeaway and fast food restaurants YoY change

Year

Year

Methodology

We used World Population Review to find out the most populous cities in the UK.

We used store locators for McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, KFC, and Five Guys to find out the number of stores in each of our locations.

We then removed any cities that did not come up when using the store locators from our seeding list.

Finally, we used Statista to find the number of fast food restaurants and takeaways in the UK from 2013.

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