KFC opened a new restaurant at Brighton Marina on Monday 14 September 2026, taking over a unit left vacant by Pizza Hut. Run by franchise operator K&Z, the 112-cover restaurant has created 30 jobs and adds to KFC UK’s franchised estate along the South Coast.
The restaurant sits on the marina’s boardwalk and offers table service, digital ordering kiosks, click and collect and delivery through Just Eat, Deliveroo and Uber Eats, with a dedicated area set aside for delivery drivers. It serves KFC’s full fried chicken menu alongside the Tenders and Dips range and the Kwench by KFC drinks line, which includes a Strawberry Shortcake Krunch shake and a Cherry Boba Refresher.
K&Z, the franchisee behind the site, describes itself as a multi-brand operator with a 20-year partnership with KFC UK, running restaurants across South London and the South Coast.
Thirty jobs and a community role on the seafront
The 30 posts created cover team member, team leader and management roles. Sarah Puleston, head of people and culture at K&Z, said: “Opening KFC Brighton Marina means more than 30 new local job opportunities.” K&Z has also committed the site to regular litter picks along the boardwalk and seafront, and to donating surplus food to community kitchens through a partnership with The Felix Project. The restaurant replaces a Pizza Hut unit that had stood empty on the same stretch, giving the marina a trading food outlet in a spot that had lost one.
KFC’s UK network stays a franchised one, with a high bar to enter
KFC UK operates through franchise partners for the large majority of its restaurants, a structure the brand itself has put at around 95% of the estate, making it one of the more heavily franchised networks in UK fast food and a useful illustration of how franchising works in the UK. Franchise partners are expected to hold at least £5 million in assets and £2 million in liquid funds, alongside existing hospitality or food and beverage experience and ambitions to run multiple sites, according to KFC UK’s own franchise recruitment page. That bar keeps the model out of reach for a first-time applicant and favours operators, such as K&Z, that already run several restaurants under the brand.
Good to know: KFC UK’s franchise entry bar
KFC UK’s own franchise page sets its entry requirements at £5 million in assets and £2 million in liquid funds, on top of existing multi-site hospitality experience. Requirements on that scale sit at the top end of the range set out in our guide to what it costs to open a franchise in the UK. It is not a route open to a first-time operator, which is why new restaurants tend to go to operators already running several KFC sites rather than to new entrants to the brand.
A second KFC opened in England the same week
KFC also opened a drive-thru and dine-in restaurant in Shrewsbury on the same Monday, at Hazledine Park in Meole Brace, run by the Shropshire-based franchise operator Gastronomy as its 50th KFC restaurant since it opened its first in Aberystwyth in 2007. Estates on that scale are built over years, and the multi-site route is the model most of the fast food franchises recruiting in the UK are structured around.
The two openings, around 200 miles apart and run by two unconnected franchise partners, both converted units vacated by other operators rather than building on new ground, Brighton Marina from Pizza Hut and Shrewsbury on a former leisure site. Read together, they point to growth coming from partners adding sites to an existing estate rather than from new franchisees joining the network.
What the opening adds to Brighton Marina’s food offer
Brighton Marina already carries a mix of chain and independent food and drink units around its boardwalk and multiplex cinema, the kind of leisure destination that restaurant franchises recruiting in the UK target for delivery-led sites. The new KFC gives the site a delivery-capable outlet with its own driver area, positioning it to serve the marina’s residential blocks and visitors beyond sit-down trade alone.
Whether Brighton gains further KFC restaurants, or a rival chicken chain moves into a nearby unit, depends on announcements still to come, none of which had been made as this restaurant opened its doors.
