Famous Brands buys into Nigeria. Johannesburg - Famous Brands would buy a 49 percent stake in Nigerian fast food operator UAC Restaurants, making it one of the largest fast food retailers on the continent, the group said yesterday. UAC Restaurants owns Mr Biggs, the West African country’s largest fast food chain. The deal, which was 18 months in the making, almost doubles the local fast food operator’s footprint in the rest of Africa. It was an important step in growing Famous Brands’s African strategy, chief executive Kevin Hedderwick said. He would not confirm the exact value of the deal, saying only that it was worth less than 5 percent of the market capitalisation of Famous Brands. This translates to an amount of less than R496 million. Hedderwick said it had been a “slow burning” process to expand throughout the continent through master licensing. This deal would take the company up a notch much faster. Taking the Mr Biggs franchise into account, Famous Brands’s African footprint excluding South Africa now totals 342 quick-service restaurants from a previous 117. The firm has been trading in Nigeria for the past 11 years, operating through franchised Debonairs, Fish Away, Steers and Mugg & Bean restaurants. Famous Brands also owns a portfolio of other fast food chains, including Milky Lane, Wimpy, tashas, Vovo Telo and Juicy Lucy. Mr Biggs operates 165 franchised restaurants across Nigeria and has 100 000 customers a day.It sells meat pies, doughnuts, pastries and hamburgers as well as Nigerian delicacies. Hedderwick wanted to use a different strategy to deal with Mr Biggs and the Nigerian market because it was different from anything Famous Brands had in its portfolio. He did not want to “charge” into Nigeria and apply the same strategy that the company used in South Africa.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Oct 2013 13:49:19 +0000
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