Auntie Anne’s growing presence in Ireland highlights how facilities management can support foodservice expansion across shopping centres, high-footfall destinations and increasingly varied retail formats.

The pretzel brand recently opened its 50th UK and Ireland site at The Beacon in Eastbourne, marking the halfway point towards its target of 100 locations by 2030. L’Express Franchise reports that five further sites are currently under negotiation, following the addition of 25 locations over the past five years.

For Ireland, the expansion is already creating a meaningful multi-site FM footprint. The brand's Liffey Valley location identifies Auntie Anne’s UK & Ireland as the master franchisee and confirms the operation of a high-footfall shopping-centre unit in Dublin.

The brand has also expanded its Irish presence at Pavilions Swords, where pretzels are prepared throughout the day at the counter. Auntie Anne’s own UK and Ireland website also highlights recent openings at Liffey Valley and The Square Tallaght, demonstrating the continuing development of its Dublin-area estate.

For Irish Facilities Management professionals, this growth creates a practical challenge: how to maintain consistent operational standards across multiple properties with different landlords, layouts, services and customer flows.

Retail food outlets depend on reliable power, ventilation, drainage, water, refrigeration and production equipment, alongside cleaning, waste management, planned maintenance and safe access. Where sites are located within major shopping centres, effective coordination between the operator, landlord and FM teams becomes particularly important.

Auntie Anne’s operating model adds another layer. Its dough is mixed on site, hand-rolled and baked in front of customers. British Baker reports that the brand is continuing to develop locations across shopping centres, transport hubs and other formats.

That makes equipment reliability and building services part of the customer experience as well as operational continuity. Ventilation, electrical capacity, extraction, cleaning regimes and maintenance schedules all need to work effectively in compact food-production environments, while front-of-house presentation must remain consistent.

The changing format of the estate also has FM implications. Recent UK openings include a container store at Cheshire Oaks Designer Outlet and a location at Canterbury Station, according to L’Express Franchise. Such formats demonstrate how operators can work across different property environments, but they can also require different approaches to utilities, servicing, access, waste and asset maintenance.

The scale of the rollout makes standardisation increasingly valuable. Auntie Anne’s reports a 12% compound annual growth rate over the past five years and more than 2.2 million customers annually, while its Irish estate continues to develop across established retail destinations.

For the Irish FM sector, the expansion illustrates how facilities management can become an enabler of retail growth. As foodservice brands add locations, strong maintenance planning, landlord coordination, Health & Safety controls and consistent building-services standards can help protect operational performance across a diverse estate.

For the sector, Auntie Anne’s Irish growth shows that successful multi-site expansion is not simply about securing new locations. It also depends on creating the facilities-management infrastructure capable of supporting each site once the doors open.

Source: L’Express Franchise / Auntie Anne’s UK & Ireland / Liffey Valley / Pavilions Swords / British Baker