Restaurant franchisor Spur Corporation is tweaking its operational recipe.
The group, which has diversified extensively from its eponymous steakhouse brand in recent years, will no longer manage its house of brands as a uniform growth story; instead, it plans to mobilise capital and marketing muscle on brands that can be scaled and prune where performance has stalled.
Management describes financial 2026 as a tale of two halves. The first six months were dominated by the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak that hit the cattle industry, pushing beef prices up by as much as 50% on some cuts and driving urban meat inflation at an alarming pace. The second half brought a spike in global oil prices linked to Middle East tensions, with rising fuel costs squeezing both consumer wallets and Spur’s distribution bill.
The numbers held up, though. Total restaurant sales rose 6.9% to R12.3bn, group revenue climbed 8.5% to R1.3bn and adjusted profit before tax was up 12.8%. Reported profit before tax fell 19.4%, but that decline was almost entirely due to a R129m provision linked to a GPS Food Group litigation claim.
Importantly, cash generation remained strong, with R488.6mn generated from operations. The group declared a full-year dividend of 326c a share.
Management, however, flagged that 20%–30% of restaurants across the network are underperforming, forcing the group to back its winners rather than spread resources evenly.
Panarottis is chief among those winners. The pizza and pasta chain crossed the 100-store mark in South Africa during the year and now counts 157 stores, including its international footprint. It delivered double-digit like-for-like sales growth for a third consecutive year alongside a 16% jump in revenue and 20% growth in profit.
A deliberate push into pasta as a growth category, backed by dedicated campaigns, helped lift pasta sales by 22% for the year. Panarottis also has the highest franchisee takeup of any brand in Spur’s virtual kitchen programme, with participation running near 90%. About 80% of its franchisees now also run the group’s Pizza Pug virtual brand through the same kitchens. That six-brand virtual kitchen stable grew 6.5% over the year, with Pizza Pug leading the pack.
Smashburger chain RocoMamas broke through R1bn in restaurant sales in South Africa for the first time this year, with customer counts now running at about 84% of Panarottis’ levels. With only 92 stores, plenty of consumers still don’t have an outlet nearby. To close that gap, Spur is developing a smaller, faster-to-deploy RocoMamas format aimed at food courts and other high-foot count and transient locations. This will allow RocoMamas to compete more directly with quick-service burger chains.
The Spur brand itself remains the group’s anchor, contributing about two-thirds of local franchise revenue despite accounting for less than half of total store count. Same-store sales growth of 3.8% and a 5.8% rise in South African turnover show a 60-year-old brand still finding room to grow. Its newest flagship, Burning Arrow Spur in Queenswood, Pretoria, is built around an elaborate indoor kids’ play area and has drawn crowds. This is being touted as a template for future sites.
Within the speciality portfolio, Doppio Zero is the innovation engine. What was once a single restaurant format is splitting into a family of concepts distinguished by size and location rather than menu. The familiar sit-down format remains the flagship, but the portfolio now also includes Doppio Café, a compact format for locations that don’t suit a full-scale Doppio, and Doppio Bistrot, a lifestyle-driven format for upmarket precincts.
The newest addition is Doppio Roam, a 50m²–100m² “food on the move” kiosk selling coffee, ice cream and grab-and-go options, with a first site already trading in Centurion.
Spur CEO Val Nichas sees real scale potential here, targeting 30–50 sites and pitching it as an accessible entry point for younger entrepreneurs, with investment as low as R1m–R1.5m compared with the R14m-plus needed for a full-scale flagship Spur.
For Hussar Grill, the plan is steadier: protecting the brand’s heritage while elevating the restaurant experience.
Elsewhere, the group is shrinking. The seven-store Nikos chain was sold back to its founding family in March. Nichas tells the FM that a niche cuisine brand needs a dedicated champion driving menu development. She says there are no plans to launch a replacement Greek concept.
Seafood chain John Dory’s is in decline and under a turnaround plan, with restaurant sales down 11.2%. Nichas says the brand thrived in its native KwaZulu-Natal but never established a clear enough value proposition to compete inland against Ocean Basket, the dominant player in seafood. Seven John Dory’s locations were closed during the year or converted into other Spur brands. More closures are expected.
Spur is also stepping back from being a restaurant operator to become more of a manager of brands. Of its 12 directly owned restaurants across various brands, the group is selling off its company-owned sites, freeing up capital and management attention to focus on franchising and brand-building.
Spur has less patience for brands that can’t find a defensible niche and is investing more in concepts already outgrowing South Africa’s dine-out market, which the group estimates is expanding at 4%–7% a year.
