Delivery has been the single biggest structural change in UK hospitality over the last five years. Most casual dining operators have felt it as compression: fewer early-evening covers, the same fixed costs, margins quietly eroding. For large QSR brands operating at scale with the right price point, it has been the opposite, an accelerant, capturing occasions that have moved out of restaurants and onto sofas.
Few operators have a sharper read on that shift than Alasdair Murdoch. As CEO of Burger King UK, he runs ~600 sites: about half corporate, half franchise, with the franchise side dominated by sophisticated travel and forecourt operators like SSP, Moto, Welcome Break and Motor Fuel Group. Eight years in the role, and a 30-year career across KFC, Pizza Hut International, Pizza Express International and GBK before that, give him a perspective rooted in operational experience rather than commentary.
In this conversation with Conor Sheridan, Alasdair takes us through the operational mechanics of running a network at this scale: the £1m-per-site capex discipline behind ~30 openings a year, why "washing the estate" is essential portfolio hygiene, why cash margin matters more than margin % on delivery, how labour cost as a % has barely moved through a 50% rise in the living wage, the discipline of running two suppliers on every key line, and what the Gordon Ramsay Wagyu Whopper says about innovation as a brand lever rather than a strategy. He shares his leadership model (empowered teams, asking the right questions, the army-trained instinct that "the sun will always rise in the morning") and a clear-eyed view on UK hospitality VAT and what could be possible if the policy environment were closer to the rest of Europe.
Whether you're running a multi-site QSR, a casual dining brand under pressure, or a hospitality business of any scale thinking about delivery, productivity and portfolio rigour, this is an hour well spent.
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