Smarter Restaurant Investment: How Burger King UK Uses Location Intelligence to De-Risk Site Selection

Every new site is a multi-million bet — and the cost of getting it wrong has never been higher. Shifting consumer behavior, the rise of delivery and drive-thru, evolving high streets, and rising capital costs mean that intuition and a good property agent aren’t enough. The brands winning the next decade of expansion are the ones treating location planning as a data discipline.

Join us for a conversation with Marc Balding, Chief Development Officer from Burger King UK, on how you can modernize your approach to estate strategy and site selection. We’ll explore how location intelligence is reshaping the way real estate, development, and finance teams collaborate — moving from reactive analytics (explaining why a site under-performs) to proactive opportunity scanning that surfaces white-space markets and trade-area gaps before competitors spot them.

In this session, you’ll learn:

• How to minimize risk in site selection by stress-testing scenarios — new openings, relocations, remodels, and closures — against demographics, mobility data, competitive pressure, and cannibalization, before any capital is committed
• How to forecast site investment returns with greater confidence, including projected IRR, sales transfer, and trade-area performance
• Where AI is genuinely changing the game in location planning — and where the hype outpaces reality
• The role of professional services in turning a platform into a decision-making capability: custom modelling, data integration, sales forecasting frameworks, and embedding spatial analytics into the way property committees actually make calls
• What “good” looks like — practical lessons from an iconic brand managing a complex UK estate

You’ll leave with a clearer view of how leading QSR operators are de-risking growth and protecting return on invested capital.