From 3 People to 270 Restaurants: Scaling IT With BKUK Group

The Challenge

In 2021, a new company took on the Master Franchise for Burger King in the UK. On day one, BKUK Group had three people in their head office and zero restaurants. Within a few years, they would be operating more than 270 restaurants with a support team of over 150 people.

That kind of growth is exciting. It is also brutal for anyone who gets IT wrong at the start.

BKUK needed a supplier who could do three things at once:

• Build a secure foundation from scratch - Every identity, every device, every process had to be right the first time, because retrofitting security at scale is painful
• Define the IT standards for new restaurant openings - With ambitious opening targets, every new site needed a repeatable, predictable technology footprint
• Scale without re-platforming - The tools and processes BKUK picked on day one had to still work when the estate was 100 times bigger

Most importantly, BKUK needed a partner who would say yes to the growth and then quietly make it possible - not one who would become the bottleneck.

Our Approach

We started where every secure, scalable business starts: with identity. Using Microsoft 365 and Entra ID, we gave BKUK a single source of truth for every employee - with security, access controls and onboarding workflows built in from day one.

Standardising the Restaurant Opening

We worked with BKUK’s operations team to define a standard IT footprint for every new restaurant opening. Hardware, network, point-of-sale, back-office - all pre-agreed, pre-configured, and repeatable. New restaurants could go from keys-in-hand to fully operational without reinventing the IT build every time.

Managed Support From Day One

Rather than handing BKUK a platform and walking away, we wrapped the whole foundation in a managed support service - so BKUK’s small but growing team could focus on running the business rather than running IT. Every user, every device and every site had a single point of escalation from the start.

Scaling Alongside the Estate

As BKUK opened more restaurants and hired more staff, our service scaled with them. New users were onboarded into the same secure identity framework. New sites were deployed to the same standard. The patterns we put in place on day one were still working when the estate was at 270 sites - because we designed them to.

The Results

BKUK Group grew from three people and zero restaurants to 150+ support staff and 270+ restaurants - and IT was never the constraint on that growth. New sites opened on schedule. New staff were onboarded securely. Standards held across the estate.

Just as important, the relationship grew with them. What started as foundational IT support has expanded into strategic advisory, Power Platform development and managed security - all built on the same foundation we put in place at the start.

Looking Forward

BKUK’s growth story is far from over, and neither is ours with them. We continue to partner with BKUK across managed IT, Power Platform, security and strategy - supporting the next wave of openings and the innovation projects that come with running one of the UK’s largest QSR businesses.