Auntie Anne’s opened its 50th UK and Ireland store at The Beacon in Eastbourne on Saturday 12 September 2026, the halfway mark towards a stated target of 100 sites by 2030. Sales across the estate rose 14% to £15.2 million last year, and the brand has five further sites in negotiation.
Auntie Anne’s arrived in the UK and Ireland in 2008 and has grown almost entirely through franchised stores and kiosks, concentrated in shopping centres and transport hubs rather than on the high street, a format several bakery and pastry franchises recruiting in the UK have moved towards. The brand added 25 sites over the past five years, a compound annual growth rate of 12%, and says it now serves more than 2.2 million customers a year. The pretzel dough is mixed on site, hand-rolled and baked in front of customers, which is the operational point the brand builds its positioning on.
What opened at The Beacon
The Eastbourne store opened on the Saturday morning with a giant pretzel pulling ceremony at 10.45am, followed by an hour of free pretzels from 11am, one original or cinnamon pretzel per person while stocks lasted. The Beacon is the town’s main covered shopping centre, which puts the store in the format the brand has built its estate on: an enclosed scheme with its own captive footfall, rather than a street unit dependent on passing trade. Neither the jobs created nor the floor area has been published.
An estate built on footfall, not high streets
The recent openings show where the brand is looking. It has taken space at Frasers Plus Braehead in Glasgow and, in the Republic of Ireland, at Liffey Valley in Dublin. It has also moved into formats it did not previously use, with a first container store at Cheshire Oaks Designer Outlet and a second at Canterbury Station. Kiosks and containers sit at a different cost level from an in-line unit, and they let the brand take pitches inside schemes and stations that would not support a full shopfront, a format decision covered in how to open a bakery in the UK.
Good to know
Auntie Anne’s UK and Ireland is itself the master franchisee of the American brand, and it franchises the stores on to operators here. A network can therefore be franchised at two levels at once, which is common among US brands in the UK and changes who the agreement is actually signed with.
What the franchisor puts in
On its franchising site the company sets out what it supplies to a franchisee: site selection, design and construction, full operational training, an integrated supply chain and ongoing support after opening. It does not publish an initial fee, an ongoing fee or a total set-up cost, which is normal in the UK, where nothing obliges a franchisor to publish either, so the benchmarks in what it costs to open a franchise in the UK are the only comparison available before an enquiry. Max Burton, managing director of Auntie Anne’s UK and Ireland, said: “Reaching 50 stores is an important milestone for Auntie Anne’s in the UK and Ireland, but we still see significant headroom for the brand.”
Halfway to 100 by 2030
The brand set out in March 2026 to open 10 stores during the year, against sales across the estate of £15.2 million for the 12 months to 31 December 2025, up 14%. Five sites are in negotiation. Holding a 12% compound rate from 50 sites would put the network near 100 by 2030 without any acceleration, so the target is a continuation of the current pace rather than a step change.
The signals to watch are how many of the next ten land in containers and stations rather than shopping centres, and whether the Dublin sites are followed by more in Ireland. Operators weighing a kiosk or in-line unit of their own can compare published terms across the UK franchise directory.
