- Chicken shops see footfall increase at more than twice the rate of the only other fast-food category to register growth
- Lower spending power, social media buzz, and cultural relevance make chicken shops the go-to dining choice for Gen Z
- Footfall at pubs continues to decline, but fast-food restaurants have increased soft drinks options by 30% since 2020 to pick up new customers and up to 10% of coffee shop visits are now in the evening
- Matcha adoption – with 16 different flavours now available in June – shows how quickly social media trends are showing up on menus
Amelia Dimoldenberg may have called time on the popular YouTube series Chicken Shop Date after more than a decade of interviewing celebrities, but new figures from Meaningful Vision suggest chicken restaurants are fast becoming the UK’s most popular fast-food format.
Despite fast-food restaurants seeing a -0.9% decline in footfall during the first six months of 2026 – compared to 0.6% growth last year – chicken shops were one of only two segments within the sector to see an increase in the number of visitors. With an 8.9% rise in footfall, they also grew at more than twice the rate of ethnic cuisine restaurants (4.2%) – the only other fast-food style to see an upturn in demand.
Several US chains have entered or are about to enter the UK chicken shop market, including Dave’s Hot Chicken which launched in December 2024 and Chick-fil-A’s arrival in Belfast in January 2025. Houston Hot Chicken, which is part of the Pizza Express group, is due to launch in Stevenage in October 2026, and Raising Cane’s is planning a Piccadilly Circus flagship store later this year.
Meaningful Vision – which tracks customer visits, pricing, promotions, and store openings at 60,000 outlets run by the UK’s top 300 fast-food, pub, and casual dining brands, ranging from Domino’s to Wetherspoon’s – said there were several factors behind chicken shops’ growing popularity, including the jobs crisis facing many young people and changing drinking habits.
According to Office for National Statistics data, there were an estimated 981,000 young people aged 16 to 24 who were not in education, employment, or training (NEET) in April to June 2026, up by 30,000 compared to the same period during 2025 and around 50% since 2021.
Maria Vanifatova, CEO of Meaningful Vision, said: “There are several reasons behind the rising popularity of chicken shops. With the difficult jobs market for younger people, budgets are tighter and many have lower spending power. At £10-£15 for a meal, chicken shops are a much cheaper night out and more affordable place to spend time with friends than going to the pub or a casual dining restaurant.
“Another factor is the operators behind the trend. US brands feel culturally relevant: Wingstop, Popeyes, and Dave’s Hot Chicken bring TikTok buzz. The format is also built for groups – wings, tenders, loaded fries, and dips are easy to share with friends, giving it a more social feel than many other restaurant formats.
“On top of that, there is flavour and novelty through sauces, spice levels, and limited-time offers. It’s social-media friendly, with visual food and spicy challenges driving hype. And it’s simply more flexible than casual dining: no booking is required, service is quick, and it’s an easy place to meet-up with friends.
“Put together, all these factors make chicken shops a format perfectly designed for how younger consumers actually want to socialise right now.”
In addition, Meaningful Vision found the decline in footfall to pubs has continued this year, with a brief respite in July during the World Cup. May saw the number of visitors down -7.4% compared to the same month in 2025, while June improved to -5.5% and July flipped narrowly positive to 0.2%.
The firm expects the improvement in July to be short-lived, however, as younger people continue to shift their socialising from the pub to eateries and coffee shops. Fast-food outlets have seen footfall grow 5.1% after 6pm, while up to 10% of coffee shop visits now take place in the evening.
As a result, soft drinks are becoming a growth lever for hospitality operators across every format, and they are now offering a broader variety of options to consumers. Coffee shops are leading the way, with 46 cold drink items on average, while fast-food has 28 – up 30% on 2020 – and casual dining 16. Matcha-flavours drinks are particularly standing out, with the choices doubling in just two years to 16 different options on menus in June.
Looking at last year’s TikTok food trends, Meaningful Vision said two are already showing up on menus in a significant way. Cloud coffee and ube have both moved from social virality into adoption at food and drink outlets, with more to follow.
Maria Vanifatova added: “There is conflicting data about Gen Z’s drinking habits, but what’s clear is that people are visiting the pub less frequently. The World Cup provided a temporary reprieve, but the overall trend is undoubtedly lower footfall.
“Fast-food and coffee shop operators are looking to that as an opportunity, offering a lot more choice for consumers who like to socialise somewhere other than the pub. In turn, we are seeing real innovation beyond coffee and cola: collagen drinks, protein drinks, fibre-enriched, matcha, mushroom-based drinks, CBD drinks, and craft lemonades are all emerging as new growth drivers on menus.
“Matcha deserves a special mention because the numbers are impressive. It commands a 25% price premium – and consumers are paying it without pushback. This is a category that’s gone from niche to mainstream extremely quickly, and it’s a good example of how quickly a trend can scale once it catches on.
“We are seeing more social trends converting into real menu items faster than they used to – watching TikTok today is genuinely a leading indicator for menus tomorrow. Keep an eye on ‘fricy’ and ‘swicy’ – fried-spicy and sweet-spicy combinations – showing up through Japanese and Korean sauces and dirty sodas, buoyed by the growing influence of K-Pop and other cultural factors on younger audiences. These are early-stage trends, but based on the pattern we saw with matcha and cloud coffee, this is exactly the kind of signal worth noting for the remainder of 2026 and into next year.”