Zambrero has opened its 17th UK restaurant, in Brackmills, Northampton, the Mexican-inspired chain’s first site in Northamptonshire. The unit is run by Caleb Slater, a 20-year-old first-time hospitality entrepreneur, and has created ten full and part-time jobs. The opening is part of Zambrero UK’s push towards 100 restaurants by 2030, recruited through its live franchise programme.
Zambrero UK runs an active franchise recruitment programme, with a dedicated page inviting prospective franchise partners to “start your franchise journey”. The chain offers several formats, from kiosks to drive-thrus, and separately courts commercial property agents with a landlord information pack, a sign of active site selection across the UK. Neither the initial franchise fee nor the total investment range is published on the recruitment page.
A first-time franchise partner in Northampton
Caleb Slater said opening the restaurant had “been something I’ve been working towards for a long time”, becoming a franchise partner with no prior hospitality-ownership experience. Emily Teh, chief executive of Zambrero UK, said Slater was “exactly the kind of ambitious entrepreneur we’re looking to partner with as we continue expanding Zambrero across the UK”. The Brackmills site is the brand’s first in the county and its 17th nationally.
Franchise recruitment drives the UK rollout
Zambrero UK states a target of 100 restaurants by 2030, to be reached primarily through franchise partners rather than company-operated growth. The brand’s recruitment page describes a “proven business model and support network” and lists flexible formats to suit different site types, from small kiosks to standalone drive-thrus. The Northampton restaurant follows an earlier expansion into Scotland, part of a rollout that has moved beyond the brand’s original southern England base. Zambrero’s UK head office has also appointed dedicated franchise development agents, a role brands typically use to recruit and support new franchise partners across a wider territory than head office alone can cover directly.
The brand’s landlord information pack, aimed at commercial property agents rather than prospective franchisees, points to Zambrero seeking sites ahead of confirming individual franchise partners for them. That sequencing, property first, partner second, is common in UK fast-casual franchising, where a franchisor secures a pipeline of sites and then matches them to recruited operators rather than waiting for a franchise partner to source their own premises.
Good to know
Zambrero UK’s own franchise page does not publish an initial fee or a total investment range. The UK has no franchise disclosure law and no public register of franchise agreements, so a franchisor’s own page is the only place such figures would normally appear; when it does not publish them, as here, no other source holds them either.
A widening Mexican-inspired quick-service sector
Zambrero’s Northampton opening adds to a UK quick-service sector that has seen a run of similarly sized fast-casual chains expand into secondary towns in 2026, alongside established rollouts from chains such as Taco Bell and German Doner Kebab. The brand has not published further confirmed UK opening dates beyond Northampton, and its site-selection activity through commercial property agents points to further franchise partner recruitment continuing across the country.
