Fast food in the Netherlands: how fast food lovers reshape the competitive picture
Fast food plays a central role in everyday consumption in the Netherlands.
Between 2024 and 2025, millions of visits were distributed across international fast food chains and a wide landscape of locally rooted concepts.
Using Accurat’s AI-powered market research, we analysed fast food visits in the Netherlands across 2024 and 2025, with results available shortly after the end of the period. The analysis looks at both all fast food consumers and a purpose-built segment of fast food lovers, defined as consumers who visit a fast food restaurant at least once per month.
Local chip shops were grouped into a single store group, together with Dutch chains such as Foodmaster, Kwalitaria, ’t Bakhuus, Febo and Bram Ladage. This makes it possible to structurally compare local players with international chains such as McDonald’s, Domino’s Pizza, Subway, KFC and Burger King.
In the Netherlands, the competitive story in fast food is not about local players versus international chains gaining or losing ground. The real differences emerge when you look at how individual brands perform within a very stable market structure.
What this tells us about fast food competition in the Netherlands
Three insights stand out:
- The Dutch fast food market is structurally stable at group level
- Brand-level dynamics explain most competitive differences
- Fast food lovers form a distinct segment with its own brand hierarchy
By grouping local chip shops into a single store group and analysing a purpose-built segment of fast food lovers, this study shows how AI-powered behavioural insight reveals competitive dynamics that brand rankings alone cannot capture.