Another US fast food chain announces plans to open restaurants in UK

Another US fast food chain is plotting their UK invasion after the success of Wendy’s and Popeyes. Burger restaurant Carls Jr has announced plans to open restaurants across Britain, offering customers chargrilled burgers, chicken goujons and milkshakes.

This is the latest step in the Californian fast-food restaurant’s European expansion, having already set up chains in Spain, France, Denmark, Turkey, and Switzerland. The restaurant is hoping to get involved in an industry worth more than £22 billion and emulate the success of other chains.

Carls Jr, which started more than eighty years ago has more than 1,100 restaurants across 35 countries. Started by Carl Karcher in 1941 in southern California the restaurant has gone from strength to strength and is now hoping to emulate the success of McDonald’s, Shake Shack and Five Guys.

For some, this isn’t the first attempt they’ve made to get their foot in the door. Burger chain Five Guys opened its first restaurant in Covent Garden in 2013 and since then the Virginia-based firm has opened 159 locations across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Joining Five Guys in trying to upset the established order when it comes to burgers in the UK is Shake Shack. A relative newcomer to the fast food scene – it started out as a hot dog cart in New York’s Madison Square Park in 2001, the firm has had a meteoric rise.

Less than 20 years after setting up its first permanent kiosk, it took in more than £944million from 2023 to 2024. Some were less successful.

Chick-fil-A opened a pop-up store in The Oracle shopping centre in Reading, Berkshire, in 2019, but closed after the six-month pilot period when the lease on the site was not extended.

After Chick-fil-A announced its plans for its Reading branch, the decision was condemned by LGBTQ rights groups across the UK due to historic links with anti-gay beliefs. Chick-fil-A is still largely rooted in its founder’s Christian beliefs.

The Atlanta-based fried chicken chain which runs more than 2,800 restaurants across the US, Canada and Puerto Rico is making another attempt to expand. It is aiming to open five restaurants in the UK from 2015 to 2027, creating between 80 and 120 jobs per branch.

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