Organising for flow to accelerate the digital business in retail and QSR

Context snapshot

Industry: Quick Service Restaurant (QSR)

Scale: 1,000+ restaurants

Operating context: Multi-site, high-volume, margin-sensitive

Pressure points: Speed of change, margin erosion, delivery overload, dependency on third parties

Digital progression: From c. 20% pre-COVID to ~70% of sales, making Digital a >£1bn channel

Executive tension

At the onset of COVID, this leading QSR brand faced a structural shock.

Digital ordering had been marginal. The business was still largely a cash-counter operation. Almost overnight, customer behaviour shifted: kiosks, mobile ordering and home delivery became the default.

The risk was existential:

• Becoming a commodity supplier to delivery aggregators

• Losing control of margins

• Falling behind faster-moving competitors and new entrants

• Eroding brand relevance, particularly with younger audiences

At the same time, Technology delivery was slow and overloaded. Most initiatives took far longer than planned, and many failed to land.

A newly appointed CTO entered the role knowing that incremental fixes would not be enough. Radically different thinking was required.

Reframing the problem

This was not a lack of ambition or Technology investment.

The organisation had already built solid technical foundations, including a well-engineered cloud platform. The constraint sat elsewhere.

The real issues were systemic:

• Too many initiatives competing for the same scarce teams

• Budgets allocated without regard for delivery capacity

• Heavy reliance on external suppliers, creating fragmentation and technical debt

• Digital treated as a channel rather than a core business capability

At the same time, customer data made the stakes explicit:

• Customers ordered more calmly via digital channels

• Basket sizes were approximately 10% higher

• At scale, Digital was becoming a >£1bn business

Not moving fast enough would directly damage brand relevance, unit economics, and long-term margin control.

This was often framed internally as a delivery problem. It wasn’t.

Tighter project management would only have slowed things further. The real shift required was:

• From control to flow

• From doing more to focusing deliberately on what mattered most

• From centralised decision-making to distributed ownership

• From opaque prioritisation to early, transparent trade-offs

The constraint was not effort.

It was alignment and decision coherence.

How we worked

1. Create transparency and shared ownership

Big-room planning was introduced to bring Business and Technology leaders into the same conversations — not as an end state, but as a reset.

Overload, dependencies, and trade-offs were made visible, decisions were made more collaboratively and flow improved.

Big-room planning progressively evolved into continuous Lean portfolio management at value stream level, while quarterly increments were repurposed to focus on iterating strategy rather than committing fixed plans.

2. Stabilise quality while accelerating

Rapid growth was creating incidents and friction, consuming valuable engineering capacity.

Disciplined Kaizen was embedded at team level, alongside systemic improvement cycles to address cross-team issues — containing risk while increasing speed.

A cross-team Kaizen framework was also established to drive systemic improvements across multiple teams.

3. Shift from projects to value streams

Planning moved from episodic events to continuous planning within clearly defined value streams:

• Sprint demonstrations with stakeholders one week

• Rolling-horizon planning the next (current quarter, next quarter, six months)

• Full transparency on priorities and capacity

This enabled faster learning and earlier correction.

4. Rewire leadership, not just teams

Value streams were supported by:

• Cross-functional leadership teams

• Strong functional leadership maintaining coherence across architecture, product, and engineering

• A weekly leadership cadence connecting streams and functions

Quarterly forums were repurposed into strategy refreshes — not to approve plans, but to challenge and adapt strategy in real conditions.

Evidence of movement

The shift was material and sustained.

Major Digital capabilities were delivered predictably, including:

• Loyalty platform

• Owned home-delivery solution

• Nationwide kiosk rollout and upgrades

• Mobile app and web presence

• Continuous menu and promotion optimisation

Digital sales increased from c. 20% pre-COVID to approximately 70% within a few years. Digital became more integrated into the business, generating over £1bn in revenue with higher basket values than front-counter sales.

The organisation developed the ability to respond rapidly to emerging issues — such as UX constraints, fraud, and customer service load — and to rebalance commercial decisions to protect margins.

The business moved from being overwhelmed to being responsive.

The transformation became a recognised reference point within the QSR and multi-site retail sector for large-scale digitalisation delivered without loss of margin or brand control. It was externally recognised with an overall Business Agility award from the Agile Business Consortium and featured as a real-world case example in the latest edition of Team Topologies, highlighting the co-evolution of value streams, leadership structure, and organisational design.

Inviting your reflection

If your organisation is:

• Overloaded with initiatives

• Struggling to convert strategy into flow

• Trying to solve delivery problems with more control

you may be facing the same pattern.

The question is not whether you are doing enough —

but whether your leadership system is enabling focus, flow, and coherent decision-making under pressure.

Testimonial

" It has been an absolute pleasure to work with Philipe over the last about 30 months as he been a remarkable Systems / Organisation coach to the KFC UK's digital team. He has been instrumental in transforming our digital team's operating model, significantly enhancing productivity, efficiency and maturity across the board. 

Philippe has worked in the industry delivery digital transformation for big organisations before he moved to full time coaching and due to this he possesses a unique blend of expertise in systems thinking and practical coaching. His approach to change management is both innovative and effective, ensuring that new ways of working are not only implemented but also embraced by all team members. The results speak for themselves – The Agile Business Consortium recognised our team as leaders in Overall Business Agility earlier this year !

Moreover, Philippe has delivered comprehensive coaching and training not just to our digital teams but across various departments within our organisation. His ability to tailor coaching strategies to diverse groups and individuals is commendable. Philipe has a knack for identifying areas for improvement and addressing them with the right mix of challenge and support.

Philippe's contribution is beyond just training and coaching the team. He has turned the team into a continuous learning and adapting machine, the results of which will be reaped by the organisation for years to come. I confidently endorse Philippe to any organisation that requires deep changes with a forward thinking approach to digital transformation. "

Vihang Shah - Head of Digital

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