Fast Food Chains in the UK with Poor Food Hygiene Ratings - September 2024

McDonald's, Subway, Burger King and KFC, the undisputed heavy weights of UK fast food with millions of us eating at their restaurants every day. With great power comes great responsibility and some chains take their responsibility of food hygiene more serious than others.

Burger King has the smallest number of locations in the UK of the four at around 500 and that is reflected with it's small number of low food hygiene ratings. It's lowest score is 2 (Improvement Necessary) which it has four of. While they need to improve this, they could be in far worse shape.

KFC doesn't fare too badly with it's 1,000 plus locations having just 3 ratings of 2 (Improvement Necessary) but unfortunately it is also the only one of the group apart from Subway that also has a 1 (Major Improvement Necessary). Mistakes can be made with 1,000 plus restaurants but while it's a small number it's easy to fix.

McDonald's is a clear winner in the category with an impressive record of over 1,000 locations and their lowest score being 2 (Improvement Necessary) which they have three of. McDonald's have always seemed to have the shrewdest corporate team, so this doesn't come as a great surprise, but is reassuring nonetheless.

Subway has the most locations, almost as many as the others put together and that shows in their food hygiene ratings. Our findings show that they are the only one of the four to have a food hygiene rating of 0 (Urgent Improvement Necessary). They also have a handful of 1 (Major Improvement Necessary) ratings. What could cause the food hygiene ratings at Subway to be worse than it's competitors? Interestingly the initial franchise fee for a Subway is £8,500 while the others are around £30,000 to £40,000. Perhaps they've adopted a mentality more common with tech companies of growth at all costs, however it's the consumer that bears the real cost.