Spur opened 46 restaurants last financial year. It also closed 23.
Both numbers sit in the audited statements, because Spur is JSE-listed and has no choice about publishing the second one. That is the whole point.
Forty-six opened. Twenty-three closed.
Almost no private franchisor in South Africa discloses the second number. A brand puts an outlet count on its website and describes the network as expanding. No auditor signs it, no regulator reviews it, and the number in the brochure is the number they chose to put there.
Sales grew 8.3%. Per store, far less reached the floor.
R11.5bn in franchised restaurant sales across 724 outlets in South Africa and 13 other markets.
The average is a blend, and you are not the blend
R15.9m spans ten brands across two continents. A Panarottis in a small town and a Spur in a metro mall sit nowhere near each other on it.
The test to apply to everyone else
Spur has guided toward 56 new restaurants for FY2026. That is the number that will get quoted. If last year's closure ratio holds, the network grows by about half of it, and the full-year statement will show which, because it has to.
When a franchisor tells you how many stores it is opening, three questions follow:
- How many closed in the same period? A gross opening number without a closure number is half a sentence.
- Is the average turnover per outlet derived from audited figures or from a model? An illustrative model is a projection with better manners.
- Which of these numbers is signed by an auditor? If none of them are, you are being asked to take the network's growth on trust.
None of this makes Spur a better or worse franchise to buy than a private brand. It makes Spur checkable, and checkable is the standard the rest of the market should be held to.
