Pillar 1: the moat
Structured, scraped, updated daily. Price benchmarks, the openings and closures tracker, hiring signal and the Buyer Interest Index: the numbers nobody else in South Africa publishes.
Checkers Sixty60 turned over R11.9bn in six months from 875 stores. It is not beating you on food. It is winning the decision that used to end with somebody ordering from you.
Headline CPI hit 5.0% in June, a two-year high, and every operator read that as bad news. Food inflation was 1.6%. Transport was 12.7%. If you budget off the headline you are budgeting off somebody else's basket.
A foot-and-mouth outbreak became 30% beef inflation, which became a R70.90 Big Mac, which is quietly moving customers from burgers to chicken. The whole chain, in one story.
Summer menus get planned now, not in November. What the global signal says is heading for SA counters, plus the honest answer on the green stuff.
South Africa's first-ever market inquiry into the franchise sector is about to begin: 18 months of formal scrutiny, with fast food a priority. What it covers, and what operators should do now.
Micro-format outlets are dominating this quarter's openings. Lower capex, faster payback, and a different question to ask before you sign.
The wood-fired, leopard-spotted, 90-second Neapolitan owned the last decade of pizza credibility. The die-hards still bow to it. But the growth has moved somewhere else.
Tacos up 152%, pork up 120%, bagels up 841% off a small base. The menu is moving faster than most franchise agreements allow operators to move with it.
The headline index: how hard South Africa is shopping for franchises across every category we track, against the past year. 1 of 4 categories currently carry enough search signal to index.
| Brand | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken Licken | 100 | |
| KFC | 94 | New franchises rarely released |
| Pedros | 63 | |
| Galito's | <1 | |
| Nando's | <1 |
Franchise-search volume in this category is too thin for a momentum reading. Brand shares below are still measured.
| Brand | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Wimpy | 100 | |
| Vida e Caffe | <1 | |
| Seattle Coffee | <1 | |
| Bootlegger | <1 | |
| Mugg & Bean | <1 |
Franchise-search volume in this category is too thin for a momentum reading. Brand shares below are still measured.
| Brand | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Steers | 100 | |
| Spur | 77 | |
| McDonald's | 46 | |
| Burger King | 38 | |
| RocoMamas | <1 |
Franchise-search volume in this category is too thin for a momentum reading. Brand shares below are still measured.
| Brand | Share | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Debonairs | 100 | |
| Roman's Pizza | <1 | |
| Domino's | <1 | |
| Panarottis | <1 | |
| Col'Cacchio | <1 |
| Category | Brand | Search term tracked |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken QSR | KFC | KFC franchise |
| Chicken QSR | Pedros | Pedros franchise |
| Chicken QSR | Chicken Licken | Chicken Licken franchise |
| Chicken QSR | Galito's | Galito's franchise |
| Chicken QSR | Nando's | Nando's franchise |
| Coffee | Vida e Caffe | Vida e Caffe franchise |
| Coffee | Seattle Coffee | Seattle Coffee franchise |
| Coffee | Bootlegger | Bootlegger franchise |
| Coffee | Mugg & Bean | Mugg and Bean franchise |
| Coffee | Wimpy | Wimpy franchise |
| Burgers & grills | Steers | Steers franchise |
| Burgers & grills | McDonald's | McDonalds franchise |
| Burgers & grills | Burger King | Burger King franchise |
| Burgers & grills | RocoMamas | RocoMamas franchise |
| Burgers & grills | Spur | Spur franchise |
| Pizza | Debonairs | Debonairs franchise |
| Pizza | Roman's Pizza | Romans Pizza franchise |
| Pizza | Domino's | Dominos franchise |
| Pizza | Panarottis | Panarottis franchise |
| Pizza | Col'Cacchio | Col'Cacchio franchise |
The mockup for this page showed five indices. Two exist. The others needed consumer confidence we do not license, and profitability and brand sentiment data nobody publishes, so they are not here.
Updated 6 Oct · Reserve Bank and the Automobile Association. The dashed tiles are figures we state rather than collect, because their publisher blocks scripted access or the number changes once a year; each names its source and when the next one is due. Rand figures under each are arithmetic on the assumption shown, never a forecast. Work them out on your own numbers →
Four inputs we collect ourselves, weighted equally: diesel, petrol, the prime rate and the rand. Equal weights are a choice, not a shortcut. Weighting by share of a real operator's cost base would be better and there is no South African franchise cost-structure data to do it with, so we declare a plain method rather than invent a clever one. Percentages above are each input's move since the base month.
Headline CPI is deliberately not in it. CPI is a rate of change, not a level, and averaging a rate into an index of levels reverses the sign: CPI easing from 5.0% to 4.3% would read as costs falling when prices in fact still rose.
6 weekly readings so far. The index starts where its data starts. The Reserve Bank publishes about twenty-five recent observations and nothing older, so prime and the rand cannot be backfilled, and a composite stitched across components with different coverage would be exactly the quiet fudge this site refuses. It extends by one reading a week from here.
The chart's scale starts just below the lowest reading rather than at zero, because an index that sits near 100 drawn from zero is four identical blocks.
| Brand | Stores online | Where they are | How it prices |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debonairs Pizza | 756 | Gauteng 216, KwaZulu-Natal 146, Western Cape 102 | Mostly national68 of 73 products match across 3 provinces |
| Steers | 634 | Gauteng 219, KwaZulu-Natal 107, Western Cape 97 | Mostly national84 of 86 products match across 3 provinces |
| Fishaways | 230 | Gauteng 93, KwaZulu-Natal 46, Eastern Cape 21 | One national priceAll 81 products priced the same in Eastgate, Empangeni, Melkbosstrand |
| Wimpy | 95 | Gauteng 36, Mpumalanga 11, Western Cape 11 | Mostly national173 of 181 products match across 3 provinces |
| Milky Lane | 58 | Gauteng 23, Western Cape 12, KwaZulu-Natal 9 | One national priceAll 85 products priced the same in Park Station, Ballito, Parow |
| Mugg & Bean | 12 | KwaZulu-Natal 5, Free State 2, Western Cape 2 | Priced locallyOnly 87 of 119 products match. Some of that will be format, not policy. |
Week of 5 October 2026, read 5 Oct. Counted from each brand's own ordering app. Stores online is not the same as outlets. Wimpy runs roughly five hundred restaurants and lists a fraction of them for online ordering, so this measures the online network, which is a separate thing worth watching. Pricing policy compares the same named product across one store in each of 3 provinces: a match means the brand holds one price, a difference can be policy or a difference in store format, and the ratio is shown so you can judge which.
Each move below is measured and dated. Put your own numbers in and it does the multiplication, nothing more. It does not forecast, and it knows nothing about your business that you have not typed.
Updated 6 Oct · Reserve Bank and the Automobile Association. Headline CPI is here because it is quoted at you constantly, not because it is your inflation rate: why the headline is the wrong number.
Cappuccino, regular, 250ml: August 2026 · Sample data
| Brand | Price |
|---|---|
| Brand A | R44.00 |
| Brand B | R40.50 |
| Category average | R38.50 |
| Brand C | R36.00 |
| Brand D | R32.50 |
| Brand | Location | Move | Signal | Week |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand A | Ballito, KZN | Opening | 3rd new site this quarter | This week |
| Brand B | Centurion, GP | Opening | Micro-format, first of kind | This week |
| Brand C | Claremont, WC | Closure | 2nd closure in the node | Last week |
| Brand D | Polokwane, LP | Opening | First store outside metros | Last week |
Sample rows: the tracker will populate from scraped openings/closures feeds.
Every tracked price, month by month, back to the start: with CSV export for your own models.
What it costs, which brands you can actually buy, and what the demand data says. Six pages, every figure sourced.
All twenty terms ranked, with each one's share of its group, across South Africa, Britain and America.
Franchise Hub is live. The Brief, the index and every piece are free to read without an account. Registering adds the forum, the weekly poll and the marketplace, and takes a minute. We never sell your details and we do not email you for the sake of it.
Register free