A good bet on burg(h)ers

It is heartening to realise that no matter how straitened the economic circumstance, there’s no stopping the stout burghers of our beloved country from piling into their calorific explosion of choice.

The good people of Famous Brands have made it their mission to ensure that this is easy to achieve, covering the land with fast- and medium-paced offerings that satisfy cravings for all the major food groups at a range of price points that suit a broad slice of the economically active population.

The group has combined strong organic growth with a slew of acquisitions, most notably the purchase of Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK), a leader in the vibrant premium burger category in the UK, which is of a scale and ambition that could prove transformational for the group.

This is not the first successful SA company to have had a butcher’s at the state of the local market and decide that it made sense to dip more than just a tentative toe into pastures new — and it won’t be the last.

While there has been considerable focus on integrating GBK into the broader business despite challenges thrown up by the uncertainty surrounding Brexit, the concentration in the local market has been on the careful alignment of restaurant footprint to market demand.

The group’s not shy of closing restaurants where changing demographics and economic circumstances make them unviable, but it also opened 192 restaurants in the year.

Management is focusing on growth, organically and by acquisition, and its plans remain admirably ambitious.

It must be difficult to do business when you have a reputation for being about as toxic as one of the more aggressive haemorrhagic fevers