Heathrow’s Head of Category – Retail Stephanie Pears sat down with TRBusiness Editorial Director Faye Bartle to talk F&B evolution at the hub.

More summer pop-ups, airport-firsts from big names such as Bill’s, which is coming to T2 this spring, and finding brands that ‘travelise’ over chasing trends are among the key factors driving Heathrow’s ever-evolving F&B offering.

Heathrow Airport is targeting 25 food & beverage (F&B) openings in 2026, as Head of Category – Retail Stephanie Pears revealed when we met with her at the newly revamped Gordon Ramsay Plane Food Market in late January.

While tucking in to best-selling dishes, from Lucky Cat bao buns to classic fish and chips, Pears talked us through some of the highlights of the hub’s F&B offering, and what’s influencing decision-making.

“All the things that we’re doing to invest in our retail estate and F&B is paying dividends,” she told us.

“Passengers are engaging, they’re loving the proposition, and we’re finding that when passengers come to the airport they want to treat themselves – particularly in the F&B space.”

Hit play on the video to view the exchange, plus read more below…

Pret contract extension

For starters, getting hot drinks into the hands of passengers is no mean feat. Heathrow serves more than 30,000 barista drinks per day in its main branded outlets (Nero, Costa, SBX and Pret). For the latter, the hub has recently signed a multi-year contract extension, and will introduce a flagship Pret in T5 Arrivals this summer, taking the total number of Pret outlets across the estate to nine.

With space being at a premium, the Heathrow needs to be creative when it comes to making way for new ventures. Pop-ups, for instance, are proving to be a fruitful ‘test and learn’ opportunity by leaning into grab-and-go offers and testing the popularity of sweet treats. Following a successful run of summer pop-ups last year, Pears and the team are seeking to expand on this and “test the boundaries” on what may be possible in these temporary spaces.

“Passengers want more choice, better quality and a fast service,” she said. Meeting everyone’s needs can be a complex beast, however, which is why it’s vital to tune in to customer feedback.

“Harness any passenger feedback that you get – whether that be through the commercials of how the unit is performing relative to others in the terminal, passenger sentiment… and feed all the data points into a strategy of how you can bring that forward and enhance it for the future,” Pears advised, when speaking about the ways in which airports in general can optimise their offerings.

The double dip

For Heathrow’s part, catering to the “double dip” – passengers who want to sit down for a bite but also grab something to eat later when on-the-move – is a growing area and one that brands such as M&S Food and Yo! Sushi answer to well.

“In terms of brand partnerships, the most important factor is how those brands travelise: delivering the food you’d enjoy on the hight-street to the airport, quickly (max 15 minutes) and retaining the core integrity of the brand,” she said.

“It’s great to have one eye on what the future trends might be but you’ve also got to be quite smart about it because it may be that a current trend we have at the moment, around matcha, for example – you could easily open a matcha café, but would that give you everything that all passengers want? Would it give you the returns that you want? So, it’s being quite astute about marrying passengers saying what they want with what’s going to work and travelise in the airport.”

A version of this article first appeared in the TRBusiness February 2026 e-zine.

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