McDonald’s UK expansion plans hamstrung by beefy bureaucracy, says boss
McDonald’s boss Alastair Macrow said that the fast-food chain is seeing three year delays to open new fast-food restaurants, due to a long-winded planning process and excessive bureaucracy.
“The planning timeline in this country for us has on average increased by 55 weeks since Covid,” Macrow told the Telegraph.
“Today it takes us pretty much three years from the moment that we approve a new site to open. Of those three years, only 43 weeks are within our control, the rest is outside of it,” he said.
Macrow said that delays at local council level and planning red tape have hampered the fast-food giant’s plans to expand its restaurant chain.
Delays in the planning approval process have seen developers across the country complain of excessive waiting times – over 100,000 planning decisions took longer than eight weeks to reach a verdict in 2022.
Macrow’s comments come after a year that has seen McDonald’s battle soaring food inflation. In July, the company raised the price of its signature cheeseburger for the first time in 14 years.
Macrow told the Telegraph: “Back in my days as UK marketing director, I was really excited about launching our saver menu – January 2, 2009, I still remember the date. We launched the Mayo Chicken, that was our new ‘hero product’, 99p. It was still 99p at the start of this year… we’ve had to move that now to £1.19.”
“Inflation is inflation. We can’t change that,” he said.
The firm is currently eyeing up a £280m investment campaign in the UK to improve the efficiency of its restaurants.