Scale Smarter: The QSR Growth Playbook

Take the guesswork out of growth

Expanding a QSR brand is a thrilling but demanding challenge.

Whether you’re growing a few locations or entering new markets, scaling adds complexity and pressure to maintain quality, consistency, and profit.

That’s why we created the QSR Growth Playbook — a practical guide for ambitious brands to scale with clarity and control. Backed by industry experience, it covers essentials like menu development, market entry, operations, and consumer insights — everything needed to build a scalable, successful QSR.

Who is the playbook for?

UK-based QSR brands preparing to scale from 3 to 50+ sites

Global fast food operators entering the UK market

Investors and commercial teams supporting restaurant growth

Operations, innovation, marketing and NPD teams

Anyone serious about building a food brand with longevity

What challenges do growing QSR brands face?

As QSR brands scale, they encounter a familiar set of pain points. These are some of the most common challenges we hear from clients across the UK, Europe and the US:

  • Ensuring product consistency across locations
  • Aligning menu innovation with operations
  • Managing labour and training at scale
  • Controlling food, energy, and staff costs
  • Selecting locations that fit the brand
  • Delivering quality customer experiences quickly
  • Adapting to regional and global preferences
  • Balancing growth with margins and brand identity

What’s inside the QSR Growth Playbook?

A practical framework, proven strategies and real-world tools to help you scale smarter – see the full breakdown below.

The five pillars of scalable QSR success

Proposition

Build a brand that resonates and drives loyalty.

People

Recruit, train and retain high-performing teams.

Product

Create menus that balance creativity, consistency and cost.

Process

Design systems that scale and maintain standards.

Positioning

Understand your market, competitors and growth potential.

Menu development that performs

Learn how to design menus that work hard in the kitchen and delight in the dining room. We share strategies for aligning innovation with kitchen workflows, equipment constraints and cost control — helping you create scalable food that doesn’t compromise on quality.

Operational clarity from site 1 to site 100

We explore how to embed operational standards that support speed, service and consistency across all your locations. From training guides to kitchen layout, tech stacks to inventory systems, we help you stay efficient without losing your edge.

Local insight, global ambition

Our approach supports international expansion by helping you stay close to the local consumer, wherever they are. Through in-market research panels, cultural trend analysis and live testing, we give you the evidence to adapt with confidence.

Real tools for commercial control

Understand how to manage costs proactively, using smart planning and integrated systems. From workforce management to supplier negotiation, we break down how to protect margins while building scale.

Why F!S Group?

At F!S Group, we bring together three specialist agencies — Good Sense Research and Cambridge Market Research, to offer full-service insight and commercial strategy for the food and drink industry.

We work with some of the most innovative names in foodservice, helping them develop, optimise and scale with confidence. Our QSR clients rely on us for clarity on what to build, where to launch, how to grow and how to protect the bottom line.

Whether you’re looking to validate a new format, improve your labour model or optimise your digital ordering experience, we bring the experience, tools and data to move you forward — fast.

Download the playbook

The QSR Growth Playbook is a free downloadable guide, created to help foodservice operators unlock growth in a crowded, competitive space.

Simply enter your email address and we’ll send you the full PDF instantly.