Fastest Growing Locations for Restaurants in the UK

For years the story of UK hospitality has been told through pub closures. But there’s another side to it. While pubs have been disappearing, licensed restaurants have been opening, and in 2026 they finally overtook pubs in number.

Homefords analysed the ONS business counts for all 12 UK regions to see where that growth is happening. Some of the answers are obvious. London leads on sheer numbers. Others are less expected. Wales has grown fastest since 2019, and the North East has grown fastest since 2010.

How many restaurants are there in the UK?

There were 38,735 licensed restaurant sites in the UK in March 2026. That’s up from 35,105 in 2019 and 27,885 in 2010.

These figures cover licensed restaurants only, meaning restaurants that can serve alcohol. Unlicensed restaurants, cafés and takeaways are counted separately. Over the same period, pub numbers fell to 37,350, and we look at that side of the story in our post on the 7,330 pubs lost since 2010.

Restaurant growth by region since 2019

Restaurant numbers grew in 11 of the 12 regions between 2019 and 2026. Here’s how they rank.

Wales tops the table with 225 more restaurants, a rise of 16.3%. That’s especially striking because Wales is also losing pubs faster than almost anywhere, as we cover in our post on Scotland and Wales.

The North West added 460 restaurants, the second highest number after London. Of the regions that grew, Scotland and the West Midlands grew most slowly, both by around 5%.

London adds the most

London added 1,165 licensed restaurants between 2019 and 2026, almost a third of the UK’s 3,630 new sites. It now has 9,560, around a quarter of all UK restaurants, and 264 for every 100 pubs.

That matches what restaurant watchers are seeing. The 2026 edition of Harden’s London Restaurants tracked 146 openings in a year against 65 closures, a rate its editor described as close to boom territory, according to Harden’s. London is also the only region with more pubs than in 2019.

The North East has grown fastest since 2010

Over the longer run the picture shifts again. The North East has grown fastest since 2010, up 57.8% from 770 restaurants to 1,215. London and the North West follow.

Every region has more licensed restaurants than it did in 2010. These comparisons cross a 2015 change to the business register, which added some sites to later years, so treat the long-run figures as a guide rather than an exact count.

Northern Ireland is the exception

Northern Ireland is the only region where licensed restaurants fell between 2019 and 2026, from 725 to 695. It’s also the smallest region in the data, so a few openings or closures move its percentage a lot more than elsewhere.

Growth isn’t the same as easy trading

Rising restaurant numbers don’t mean restaurants are having an easy time. Industry trackers show a lot of churn underneath the totals.

NIQ’s Hospitality Market Monitor found restaurant numbers slipped by 1% in the last three months of 2025, with casual dining down 1.8%, according to NIQ. Its latest figures show around 1,839 licensed venues closed between March and June 2026 while 1,794 opened, as Restaurant Online reported. In other words, sites change hands quickly, and new operators often move into empty premises.

The ONS figures here are a once-a-year snapshot of registered businesses, so they show the overall direction rather than every opening and closure. That direction has been clearly upward since 2010.

What it means for pubs

As restaurants grow, the line between pub and restaurant is blurring. By 2019, the ONS found, pubs and bars employed more people serving food than working behind the bar, in its analysis of the sector. Some food-led pubs may even be registered as restaurants.

Restaurants now outnumber pubs in three regions: London, Scotland and the South East. In the East the two are level, with 3,260 restaurants and 3,270 pubs. Outside London, though, pubs still lead by 33,725 to 29,175.

For interactive charts and a lookup for your own region, see our full research on restaurants now outnumbering pubs in the UK.

Source: Office for National Statistics, UK Business Counts (local units by industry), via Nomis. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Figures are rounded to the nearest 5 by ONS. Media enquiries: hello@homefords.co.uk