Well-known franchise restaurants rolling out across South Africa

Spur’s restaurant network in South Africa grew by 16 locations in the first half of its 2025 financial year, with this growth driven by Spur, Panarottis, and Doppio Zero.

Spur is one of South Africa’s leading casual dining restaurant franchise groups and owns brands like John Dory’s, RocoMamas, Pizza e Vino, Panarottis and The Hussar Grill.

It has 726 outlets trading across South Africa and 14 countries in the rest of Africa, Mauritius and India.

On Wednesday, 5 March 2025, the company released its results for the six months through December 2024, which revealed a strong performance from the group.

Its total restaurant sales for the six months increased by 10.0% to R5.93 billion. In South Africa, the company’s largest sales contributor, sales grew by 10.2% to R5.37 billion.

The company said volume growth in South Africa was driven mainly by the Spur brand, which increased restaurant sales by 2.8%.

“Menu innovations made a notable contribution to sales growth, and cash-strapped customers responded well to the value-added campaigns,” it said.

However, the stand-out performers in this set of results were Panarottis, which increased restaurant sales by 14%, and RocoMamas, which grew by 8.4%. 

The company said Panarottis has excelled with an appealing and sustainable value proposition, while the RocoMamas brand produced excellent like-on-like growth.

One drag on these results was John Dory’s, which saw its sales decline by 1.6%. The company said this is despite securing strategic sites in the six-month period.

“Some key shifts need to occur in the new year to ensure this brand’s performance increases in this challenging category,” it said.

Spur’s Speciality brands increased sales by 86%, largely driven by the inclusion of sales from the Doppio Collection brands.

Spur acquired a 60% interest in the Doppio Collection effective 1 December 2023.

However, even excluding the three Doppio Collection brands, Spur’s existing Speciality brands increased restaurant turnovers by an impressive 5.2%, mainly driven by The Hussar Grill brand.

Spur’s group revenue e increased by 13.8% to R2.0 billion in the six-month period, driven by a significant increase in sales in the retail company stores, which rose by 130.8%.

The company made a R153.55 million profit for the period, up 12.4% on the prior year. Basic earnings per share grew by 12.1% to 178.84 cents per share.

Spur also expanded its store network in this period, growing by a net 25 stores across the group. 

This growth was largely driven by South Africa, where the company grew its network by 16 locations.

In South Africa, Spur saw the highest growth in locations, with 5 new restaurants added in the six-month period.

This is followed by Panarottis with 4, Doppio Zero with 3, and Rocomammas with 2.

The Spur brand accounts for 64% of the group’s South African restaurant sales, followed by RocoMamas and Panarottis, each representing 10% of South African restaurant sales. 

The company explained that Panarottis’ repositioning continues to gain momentum, with positive customer sentiment supporting its trading performance. 

It said the Panarottis’ small-town strategy has contributed to the double-digit growth over the past two reporting periods. 

“This is reflected in high levels of franchisee interest for new restaurants and confirms that the brand is well positioned to be a dominant brand in the pizza casual dining category,” it said.

Similarly, it explained that the marketing and product innovation strategy of RocoMamas has yielded good results with solid growth and strong like-on-like restaurant sales growth of 6.9%.

Spur also revealed that brand evolution and enhanced designs have been applied to the new Hussar Grill and Doppio Zero restaurants.

The company plans to launch its full revised look for The Hussar Grill brand by revamping one of the group’s company-owned restaurants in Cape Town during 2025.

Spur also provided more details on its Virtual Kitchen (VK) brands, which are now fully integrated into the brand offerings. The number of restaurants participating has increased to 392. 

“The VK offerings have consistently maintained their market share of the online ordering channel and continue to allow the group’s full-service restaurants to leverage their existing infrastructure,” it said.

“Pizza Pug and Just Wingz remain the top performing VK brands. Mac&Rib, the Doppio Zero VK brand that was introduced with the Doppio acquisition, brings the total number of VK brands in the group’s portfolio to six.”

Below is an overview of how many new restaurants Spur added to its South African network in the six-month period.