As we step into the new year, we embrace the dawn of an exciting new era of culinary trends. This year, fast casual food trends faced a transformative shift, bidding farewell to the familiar and welcoming a bold reimagination of flavours, techniques and dining experiences. In 2025, these trends are set to become even more influential.

 

In 2025, the fast casual food sector is set to continue to be driven by groundbreaking innovation and an intensified focus on personalisation. With consumers continuing to demand more unique and memorable dining experiences, brands will shift their strategies to prioritise customisation. This means offering an expanded range of options for customers to tailor their meals according to their individual tastes, dietary preferences and lifestyle choices.

 

The increasing demand for international flavours, especially within the kebab category, is set to drive continuous innovation and diversification in menus across the food industry. Customers are seeking more than the standard options of burgers and pizzas; they crave dishes that offer a sense of authenticity and cultural richness. As a result, fast casual food brands must embrace a broader range of international cuisines, infusing bold, unique flavours into their offerings to capture the interest of adventurous eaters.

 

Advancements in ordering technology, such as kiosks and mobile apps, are revolutionising convenience and speed, aligning with customers’ increasing expectations for quick and personalised service. By embracing AI and advanced technology, brands can stay ahead of the curve. For example, at Doner Shack, we use cutting-edge robotic kebab cutters to streamline operations, reduce waste and ensure perfectly sliced meat every time – giving our brand a competitive edge that sets us apart from others.

 

With so many brands entering the industry, you will need a compelling USP to thrive in 2025. Consumer expectations in the fast casual food sector are evolving quickly, fuelled by heightened competition and the recent success of brands breaking across borders into international markets. Because of this, demand for unique dining experiences and diverse flavours is rising, as customers seek innovative taste profiles and greater meal customisation options, making product innovation a priority.

 

For example, at Doner Shack, our menu proposition differentiates us from brands that are only focusing on developing chicken and burger products. By selling food items that are unique, we avoid the risk of drowning in an over-saturated market – particularly in the UK, where our brand has the potential to operate successfully across diverse locations.

 

Convenience, consistency and speed are also paramount, with seamless service across in-store, online and delivery channels expected by customers. With the rise of social media, people increasingly depend on positive reviews when choosing a new restaurant to visit, making it crucial to minimise negative experiences as much as possible. Customers are also increasingly prioritising sustainability, and Doner Shack's business model supports this by generating significantly less waste compared to the average brand in our sector.

 

Since the pandemic, brands have faced many significant challenges, and 2025 will be no exception, with the rise in tax, labour and energy costs. These issues mean that we must ensure strong partnerships with suppliers to lock in prices and deliver consistency, mitigating the impact of fluctuating raw material costs. Labour shortages remain a pressing issue driven by competition across sectors and changing workforce expectations – by adopting things such as self-ordering kiosks, brands can maintain operational efficiency and profitability in a challenging economic environment.

 

We’re rounding off an extremely exciting year for Doner Shack, having secured our venture into international markets, and now being named as one of the top 100 franchise opportunities in the UK, gaining a spot in the highly regarded Elite Franchise Top 100. This accomplishment reflects the dedication of our team, who share our passion for innovative cuisine and outstanding customer service. As we mark this milestone, we stay focused on innovation and growth, ensuring Doner Shack remains a standout in the franchising industry in 2025 and beyond.

Just before Christmas, I enjoyed a very lengthy lunch at Sweetings in the City of London. It’s an institution, and I’m embarrassed to say that it was my first visit, despite working in the City for eight years in the early 1990s. 

 

Regardless of when I’d visited, it would no doubt have been exactly the same experience – including the food, with its old school menu. It has remained a largely unchanged restaurant since it opened its doors in 1889, while all around it in the financial district has undergone numerous revolutions. In one respect, the rest of hospitality is currently falling in line with Sweetings, with the adoption of opening hours that are precisely targeted at times of peak footfall.

 

It operates to strict 11.30am to 3pm Monday to Friday hours (with no reservations), and this seems to continue to suit it – and its business lunch clientele – perfectly. The pandemic and various government-induced pressures since have led all hospitality businesses to rethink their outgoings, and as labour has become a much-inflated cost, it is trading hours that have come under the microscope of late.

 

Previously, a property perspective of sweating the assets through long opening hours had been a primary financial focus, but this has shifted to maximising the value of the workforce through targeted opening hours. This has coincided with a post-pandemic behavioural shift in the way people frequent hospitality businesses.  

 

Pretty much everything has skewed to earlier times. According to CGA, almost half (49%) of businesses have experienced a fall in post-10pm footfall whereas lunch is up 31%, afternoon 16% and earlier evening 24%. The retreat from later hours is being felt at myriad restaurants including Mildred’s, which used to enjoy a 6pm to 8pm as well as an 8pm to 10pm rush, but today, at its London high street sites, its trade is concentrated in the 7.30pm to 8.30pm slot. 

 

It’s a similar story in the US, with research from Toast finding that 6pm is the sweet spot for reservations, and this timing grew 6% in the third quarter of 2024. The 5pm slot is growing the fastest, with an 8% uplift to account for 14% of bookings, while 8pm is shrinking the most in popularity. An interesting phenomenon in New York City is the shift in post-work drinks from the traditional 5pm to 7pm happy hour to a 4pm “power hour”, with some of the city’s smartest bars packed at 4.30pm. 

 

The shift to earlier – and often shorter – drinking hours has certainly been reflected in trading at Stonegate, especially at its Slug & Lettuce brand, where peak hour used to be 9pm to 10pm on a Saturday but is now 3pm to 4pm. By 8pm, everybody starts to head home, according to chief executive David McDowall.  

 

With these seismic behavioural changes taking place across the country, it has pretty much led to the death knell of traditional pub opening hours of 11am six days a week and a noon start on Sundays. Few pubs beyond JD Wetherspoon stick to these sorts of hours, and a growing number have knocked Monday opening totally on the head. A local publican to me, Martin Harley, of London Village Inns, suggested you are not a real pub if you are closed on Mondays. I’m certainly sympathetic to his viewpoint, but I’m not sure that I can agree with him any more as the dynamics in the hospitality industry have changed.

 

Where I’m sure we would both agree is that customers have to be fully aware of a business’ opening hours, especially if they are – annoyingly – prone to changing them seemingly on a whim. I’m sure I’m not the only person to have made the journey to a pub or casual dining venue and found it no longer open at 4pm on a Tuesday or some other off-peak time. This is especially the case with pubs that are undoubtedly still very much experimenting with their post-pandemic (and now post-Budget) opening hours. 

 

No sane, understanding customer would have any qualms about a hospitality business adapting its trading hours in order to ensure its long-term survival, but if this does not go hand in hand with a religious updating of opening times on its website, Google, Instagram and Facebook etc, then it will ultimately be damaging. People will have found more amenable alternatives to visit, and allegiances changed.

 

Hospitality companies don’t have to be quite as rigid and unchanging as Sweetings with their timings, but until the sweet spot of trading hours is found, then businesses must absolutely keep their customers fully updated about their actions through all available communication channels.

I suspect we are entering January 2025 with a slightly different mindset than usual. The cost pressures we’re facing in April mean we need an approach that differs from the norm. We need to be braver, more determined and more laser-focused than we ever have before. 

Whether we are trying to trade our way out of the cost headwinds or manage costs more effectively, we all know we have three months to deliver a significant level of business improvement if we are to even maintain our profitability. And even if we are going to raise prices, with relatively weak consumer sentiment, price changes must be executed with real skill and precision.

Of course, the natural approach is to try a combination of all these strategies: raise prices as much as possible, put significant effort into growing sales and drive some level of productivity improvement. I want to focus the remainder of this article on the productivity improvements we could achieve.

As always, the opportunity in January is to focus on a change in habits. Having just been through all my January rotas, the real question I was asking myself was how much I want to encourage habit change, and how much I want to impose habit change on the business. 

 

We all find this debate exceptionally difficult. As operations managers, we know we aren’t in the business often enough to ensure compliance if we simply impose changes. We also understand that service levels could suffer if we do not win hearts and minds by clearly explaining how the changes can be implemented effectively.

 

But equally, if we simply encourage and cajole, we might not achieve much as our ideas could be rejected, ignored or, most frustrating of all, the team may agree but fail to follow through. More on that later.

 

So, what are the specifics I am focusing on this January? First is the number required in the kitchen on a quiet Monday. The team like two, and we are better with one. Who is right? How do we design a quiet Monday to enable us to operate with one chef? Should we compromise and have two at lunchtime and one in the evening? How much we take this forward is, of course, the result of that eternal tussle between head office ignorance and site-level intransigence.

 

Second is front of house closing. Here, we must have several debates. What is a safe number of staff to close the business? What do we do if a couple of guests are still drinking? What tasks are acceptable to do before the guest leaves? And then, of course, what are the closing tasks themselves? All create a level of complexity that means the solution isn’teasy, but there are precious hours to be saved if we can do this right.

And what about breaks? The team often prefers to not have breaks during the day, but straight shifts are not beneficial for either us or them. This is a good opportunity to revisit break schedules and adjust rotas so that everyone in the business gets their break at the right time.

There are also a few days when our standard staff rota is a bit too generous. We have always faced a challenge on Fridays, where we feel we need a larger team than the metrics suggest. As a result, the team ends up with a fixed shift allocation on Fridays, causing the rota to exceed the actual requirement. January is the time to reset and reassess this.

But another key aspect of January is that it is a time to focus on service. Teams can sometimes reduce staffing on the busiest shifts, which can negatively impact both service and our reputation. This Christmas, we have delivered the best service in our history, and it would be a shame to undermine that by cutting staff on the busier shifts in January. We still need to add more on Sundays!

So, as always, there is plenty to be done. But changing habits is valuable work. Finding the right balance between imposing change and encouraging the team is challenging. As a business, we are increasingly called upon to help with this, but there is no reason you cannot tackle it yourself if you make the time. And the money saved now brings us a step closer to offsetting the impacts of the national insurance and minimum wage increases in April. It is time to take action!