Burger Index: Hanwell Town

Same rules as always — one item, no additions, price list read as a financial document.

This one comes from the busiest matchday food operation we've logged all season — and a Step 3 club that has just changed its structure to make outside investment easier.

The index entry

The burger

A properly juicy patty on a brioche bun, topped with oven-cooked onions rather than the raw or lightly fried version most grounds default to.

That matters more than it sounds. The onions had lost the overpowering bite you sometimes get at football grounds and picked up genuine sweetness from the cook instead.

At £5, it also compares favourably with plenty we've encountered elsewhere.

The result is the second-highest Burger Index score we've logged this season, behind only Kingstonian's 9.2 at Ashford Town's ground, and ahead of the Carshalton, Leyton Orient and QPR cluster sitting between 5.6 and 7.6.

7.8/10.

Three places to buy your dinner

The more interesting thing at Hanwell is where the burger came from.

There isn't really a single food operation.

The club-run indoor Tea Bar serves the conventional football menu: burgers, cheeseburgers, chips, Pukka pies and hot dogs from a simple chalkboard price list.

Steps away is a separate street-food operation offering a much broader menu, including loaded chips, chicken and chips, nachos and multiple sauces.

Then there is a third operation selling pie and mash, with its own pricing.

Three different food offers at one Step 3 ground.

That's genuinely unusual. Most grounds we've visited at this level have one principal food outlet. Hanwell effectively gives supporters three different propositions before they've even reached the bar.

And that's part of a much broader matchday operation. There are two bars, a club shop, 50:50 draw and stadium announcer alongside the football. Hanwell's own current commercial material also lists six main sponsors, including Oliver Connell & Son, C&G Scaffolding, Anderson Travel, Merchant & Co Accountants, Bush Pie, Mash & Liquor and the Rocky Horror Show.

For Step 3, there's quite a lot going on.

Hanwell have just changed how the club is structured

That becomes more interesting when you look beyond the burger.

Hanwell are at the beginning of a significant change off the pitch. In July, the club announced a restructuring away from its traditional members' club model and towards a limited-company structure.

And the reasoning matters. Chairman David Iddiols said the new structure gives Hanwell greater organisation and, crucially, makes it easier to accommodate outside investment as the club looks to progress further up the non-league pyramid.

In other words, this isn't simply Companies House housekeeping. Hanwell have changed the vehicle through which the football club operates with future investment explicitly in mind.

There isn't yet a useful set of accounts from the new structure to tell us what the club earns, loses or requires from its backers. That means it would be wrong to attach financial conclusions to the change that the available numbers can't support.

The previous Hanwell Town Football Club CIC remains visible at Companies House, with its latest accounts made up to July 2025 and its business classified as other sports activities.

So this is one to come back to once the new structure starts producing financial filings.

The commercial operation is already visible

You don't need to wait for the accounts to see Hanwell trying to extract more value from the ground.

Even the stadium name tells part of the story. Oliver Connell & Son became Hanwell's main sponsor in 2024. The construction company subsequently gave its name to the Oliver Connell & Son Community Stadium and remains prominently associated with the club.

It's a substantial commercial partner for a Step 3 football club. The company's reported turnover for the year to June 2023 was £142 million, up from £116.7 million, with gross profit of £16.1 million.

That doesn't tell us what the Hanwell sponsorship is worth — and we shouldn't pretend it does. But it does illustrate something we've increasingly noticed while doing the Burger Index.

The commercial sophistication of a football club doesn't necessarily correspond neatly with its position in the pyramid.

Why it matters

At £13, Hanwell's adult admission sits towards the upper end of what we've encountered around this level.

But there is quite a lot being built around those ninety minutes. The stadium has a naming-rights partner. The club has multiple commercial partners. There are two bars, three food operations, merchandise and other matchday revenue opportunities.

And now the club has changed its corporate structure with outside investment and further progression explicitly in mind.

None of that proves Hanwell are profitable. We don't have the financial information to say that. Nor does three places selling food necessarily mean three club-owned revenue streams — something that matters when trying to understand what the matchday actually contributes to the football operation.

But what we saw on the ground provides an interesting companion to what Hanwell are doing corporately. This is a Step 3 club trying to make more of its stadium, broaden its commercial operation and create a structure capable of taking new investment.

And somewhere in the middle of all of that is a very good £5 burger.

7.8/10.

Kingstonian's 9.2 still leads the table.

Hanwell is the best we've had since.

The Pyramid runs the Burger Index at grounds across the pyramid — same item, same rules, every time. The Pyramid covers the finances of English football below the Premier League.