Randy's Donuts Picks Edinburgh for Its First UK Store, and That Tells You Something

A Los Angeles institution founded in 1952, famous for its giant donut sign and its cameo in Iron Man 2, has chosen Forrest Road in Edinburgh's Old Town as the launchpad for its entire UK operation. That's not a random call. It's a vote of confidence in Edinburgh's footfall, tourism pull, and appetite for experiential retail.

Randy's Donuts, the LA chain that has been slinging donuts since 1952 and had its iconic ring-shaped rooftop sign immortalised in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is opening its first UK store on Forrest Road, taking over the former Barburrito unit near The Meadows. Edinburgh gets the flag plant. Not London. Not Manchester. Edinburgh.

That decision is worth pausing on. When an American brand with genuine cultural weight picks its first international outpost, it runs the numbers hard. Footfall data, tourism volumes, student density, social media reach, average spend per visit. Forrest Road sits between the Old Town and The Meadows, a corridor that pulls in University of Edinburgh students, tourists cutting through from Greyfriars, and locals heading south. It is, commercially, a sharper location than it sometimes gets credit for.

According to VisitScotland, Edinburgh welcomed over 4.5 million overnight visitors in 2023, making it the most visited city in the UK outside London. That audience, combined with a student population of roughly 50,000 across the city's universities, creates exactly the kind of high-frequency, impulse-spend environment that a premium donut brand lives on. Randy's, which has expanded across the US and into international markets in recent years, clearly read those numbers and liked what they saw.

For Edinburgh's wider retail and hospitality sector, this is a meaningful signal. The city has taken knocks in recent years, from the pandemic hollowing out the Old Town to ongoing debates about the impact of short-term lets on local communities. A recognisable American brand choosing Edinburgh as a beachhead for UK expansion suggests the fundamentals of the city's economy remain attractive to outside investors, even if life on the ground for independent operators remains genuinely hard. According to the Scottish Retail Consortium, Scottish retail sales have shown resilience into 2025, with food and hospitality performing ahead of the UK average in several quarters.

There is also something quietly useful about Randy's cultural cachet. The brand carries name recognition that most new entrants have to spend years and serious marketing budget to build. Its association with Iron Man 2, where the donut sign featured in a memorable rooftop scene with Robert Downey Jr., gives it a ready-made hook for social content that no local competitor can replicate. For the surrounding businesses on Forrest Road and across the Meadows-fringe area, a queue-generating, Instagram-ready landmark next door is not a bad thing to have.

What this means for you: If you run a hospitality, retail, or food business anywhere near Forrest Road, start thinking now about how you benefit from the footfall Randy's will generate rather than compete with it. New anchor tenants create traffic; the smart play is to capture the overspill. More broadly, the fact that a US brand chose Edinburgh over London for its UK debut is a genuine selling point when you're pitching to suppliers, investors, or press, use it. Edinburgh is a serious commercial city, and this is another data point that proves it.