The two men who made Nando’s a global sensation

Fernando Duarte and Robert Brozin are the men behind Nando’s, the South African Portuguese chicken restaurant chain that became a global sensation.

It is so popular that even the heir apparent to the British throne, Price William, is a fan. “I like Nando’s, everyone likes a Nando’s,” the royal said.

Its global success belies that Nando’s started as a small chicken restaurant in the eighties by two men without restaurant experience.

Robert (Robbie) Brozin, the co-founder of Nando’s, was born in 1959 in Middelburg, a small town in Mpumalanga, into a Jewish-Afrikaans family.

Brozin looked up to his father and grandfather, who were very entrepreneurial and had businesses in Middelburg.

In the early 1900s, his grandfather had come from Lithuania to South Africa with nothing and built himself up as a trader in the town.

Although he came from humble beginnings, Brozin had an idyllic childhood. “As far as I was concerned, life couldn’t have been better,” Brozin said.

The family moved to Johannesburg, and he attended high school at King David Linksfield. Afterwards, he served his mandatory two years in the army.

When he returned, he followed in his father’s footsteps and studied accounting at Witwatersrand University. However, he soon found that his academic performance left much to be desired.

“I was a very bad student, to be honest,” Brozin explained. “When I got to Wits, I was already 20, and I was quite anxious. We were very entrepreneurial, and I wanted to get going.”

“I used to study at the library, but we were journaling more than studying. We were playing cards and stuffing around more than getting stuck into the work.”

Brozin was busy failing his degree. Since he couldn’t see himself becoming an accountant, he decided to do a BCom instead. “It was just a degree you did because you couldn’t do anything else,” Brozin said.

One of his biggest and only noteworthy experiences in university was meeting his wife, who attended one of his classes with him.

“When I asked her out, she thought I was someone else – so even that, I think, was a bit of a mistake from her side,” he jokingly said.

Founding Nando’s

After graduating from Wits in 1984, Brozin joined his father’s business, Teltron, an agent for Sanyo Electronics, where he befriended Mozambique-born Fernando Duarte.

They used to frequent a Portuguese take-out restaurant called Chickenland. One day, Brozin had an idea.

At the time, Portuguese or Peri Peri chicken, which came from Mozambique, wasn’t very popular in South Africa or globally.

Although the restaurant served everything from fried fish to boiled eggs, the chicken stood out because it was so delicious. “Why don’t we take this chicken to the world?” he asked.

Brozin and Duarte, two men with no restaurant experience, joined forces to purchase a 67% stake in the Chickenland business.

“We knew nothing about the restaurant business,” Brozin said. “We still don’t know much about the restaurant business, to be honest. You learn every day.”

“We learned very early on that the restaurant business, particularly, is brutal. That’s a very hard business.”

“We knew that it had to be people-focused. We knew that it had to be very innovative. It had to be because we were taking on some of the big boys.”

Brozin understood that they needed a strong name for their business. They considered naming it Fernando’s. However, that name was already taken by a bed and breakfast in Port Elizabeth. Ultimately, they decided to name the business after Duarte’s son, Nando.

So, in 1987, Nando’s opened its first restaurant in Rosettenville, Johannesburg.

Expanding the business

From there, they started opening more outlets. From the beginning, they knew that they wanted to take the business global.

However, as young entrepreneurs, they were a bit “stupid” regarding expansion, Brozin told CEO Nights with Nyimpini.

“Very early on, we wanted to go global. It was part of our vision because we felt the world hadn’t really experienced Peri Peri chicken.”

When they had three stores, they met Richard Enthoven, a South African businessman who played a key role in building several successful businesses and would eventually become a dollar billionaire.

He hit it off with Brozin and Duarte, and their flame-grilled chicken blew him away, so he agreed to back the business with his capital and business acumen.

In 1992, Enthoven agreed to bankroll their UK expansion, and his family held a majority stake in the international businesses.

“I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be really to do that, and honestly, if we hadn’t partnered with the Enthoven family when we did – which was very early on in our journey – I wouldn’t be here today,” Brozin explained.

Brozin said that his father and Enthoven were his biggest mentors in running the business. As an accountant, his father taught him about cost, but Enthoven taught him about value.

“Cost and value are two very different kinds of influences that have affected me because it’s different ways to look at your business and different ways to look at your life.”

“It’s been a great influence on shaping myself personally and, in a way, the Nando’s brand in how we’ve gone global.”

Today, Nando’s has grown to 259 stores in South Africa and locations in 20 other countries, including Australia, the USA, and the UAE.

Notably, it has an even bigger footprint in the UK than in South Africa, with 392 stores. In the 2023/2024 financial year, the UK business earned a revenue of approximately 1.37 billion British pounds (about R31.7 billion).

“The ethos of the business was around people and around having fun,” Brozin said. “Very early on, we came up with the statement.”

“How do you put Nando’s in a couple of sentences: it’s ready to have fun and make money; to change the way the world thinks about chicken; and to change people’s lives one chicken at a time.”

“If you take that, that encompasses the core vision that we’ve had 35 years ago to today.”

Brozin, who had been the CEO since its inception, stepped down in 2010 after witnessing Nando’s open its 1,000th restaurant.

He now concentrates on anti-malaria and youth employment initiatives in Africa and has won the Skoll Award for social impact.

Inside a Nando’s restaurant